Albert

Albert makes a composed impression. He wears a tie and shirt, from which neatly trimmed chest hair somewhat playfully flashes through. A tribal tattoo decorates his chest. It is large enough to hint at an audacity oriented on the mainstream, and thereby small enough to avoid seriously affronting anyone. In overall appearance, Albert is a slightly spidery computer-animated figure, who moves through life against a - likewise computer-animated - structurally-minimalist background.

Albert´s world is black, white, and very gray. He diligently waters the plants on his rooftop terrace before going to work. At this point, the protagonist´s other side opens up as he tenderly says goodbye to his pregnant wife after having a meal together. By profession, Albert is a torturer. He is someone who reproduces everyday movements in his professional life, and vice versa. The watering can thus proves to be not only an object for sprinkling water during one´s free time, but also a tool for waterboarding - the same applies to the pliers, which Albert uses to pinch tomatoes off of the local plant as well as the fingers of his victims. Albert listens to Händel, displaying a stoic professionalism as he forces confessions from people. One of the strengths of this animation movie is that director Felix Weisz does not even rudimentarily provide the motives for Albert´s choice of professions. This refusal abandons viewers in humanistic perplexity - nothing helps, not even the philosophical books that Albert, his wife, and a work colleague are studying. (Melanie Letschnig)

Translation: Lisa Rosenblatt