Mit Verlust ist zu rechnen

Because the freezer has become increasingly empty since his wife's death, the Austrian Sepp Paur sets out to look for a new partner in the Bohemian town across the border. A documentary love film that - Seidl's paradox - is staged with extreme precision towards an uncertain outcome. Seidl's cinema penetrates the limits of personal pain and then goes beyond it: in the unconditional, uncommented self-disclosure of his protagonists, the banalities, fears and ridiculousness of human life are reflected, as is the hope that things could be different. In order to give the latter more resonance, Loss is to be Expected deals primarily with the former: loss of love, loss of sunlight, loss of economic conditions (in Slovakia after the fall of the Berlin Wall). In between, the timid shimmer of communication becomes a redeeming, bright guiding light. (Christoph Huber)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum