Eklipse

Tomy and his best friend Chris spend the summer of 1999 at an alpine dairy. They help Tomy’s uncle with the milking, build a dam and explore the great outdoors. While the boys are discovering new worlds, Tomy’s mother decides to continue keeping the real reason for his father’s hospitalisation a secret from her son.
When Chris learns that Tomy’s father is in hospital with “the gay disease”, he becomes frightened – and Tomy is suddenly confronted with rejection and his own family’s silence.

Eklipse is a film about the taboos surrounding AIDS and the fear of social exclusion. It tells the story of how prejudice and ignorance affect the friendship between two boys, and how social contexts are mirrored within the microcosm of a family.
My father died of Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer caused by AIDS, in the early 1990s. I only learned about it years later, as my family tried to protect me from social discrimination.
Eklipse is a cinematic exploration of this dilemma between truth and lies. The socially conditioned inability to talk about the stigma transfers into the boys’ friendship and puts it to a severe test. This is staged through numerous moments in which the audience becomes a secret observer. The charged interplay between knowledge and ignorance, the visible and the invisible, is the unique driving force of the film. The 1999 solar eclipse that gives the film its title sets the story in a specific moment in time. The fears and anxieties, but also the excitement and curiosity that surrounded this once-in-a-century event, will remind many viewers of their own memories. It also provides a strong aesthetic device to expand the film’s central theme of visibility and invisibility.
In this context, using personal VHS material is another tool to blend reality and fiction. With Eklipse, I want to create memories by exploring the sensory and tactile qualities of cinema.

PRODUCTION 1:
Eutopiafilm - Bernhard Holzhammer, Victor Kössl,
Claudiastraße 8
6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Tel: +43 512938458
E-mail: office@eutopia.film
Web: http://www.eutopia.film
Social Media: @eutopia.film – Instagram

PRODUCTION 2:
Albolina Film - Wilfried Gufler, Debora Nischler,
Piazza della Dogana 4
39100 Bolzano, Italy
Tel: +39 0471 056 626
E-mail: info@albolina.org
Web: http://www.albolina.org
Social Media: @albolina.film - Instagram

WORLD SALES:
Films Boutique - Jean-Christophe Simon
Köpenicker Str. 184
10997 Berlin, Germany
Tel: +49 3069537850
E-mail: contact@filmsboutique.com
Web: http://www.filmsboutique.com
Social Media: @filmsboutique - Instagram

PRESS OFFICE:
Jon Rushton - Critical PR
Tel: +44 7969837242
E-mail: jon@critical-pr.com

Additional press officers: Hannah Farr - hannah@critical-pr.com