Karlovy Vary: ‘Aloys’ Director Tobias Nölle on Parallel Worlds
Psychological drama “Aloys,” Tobias Nölle’s solo feature debut, won the Fipresci Prize at this year’s Berlinale, an early milestone for the Swiss-born filmmaker’s career. In March, he added the Audience Award at Spain’s Las Palmas Film Fest. The film plays at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Another View section this week.
Nölle studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and broke through in 2008 with shortfilm “Rene,” which won Locarno’s top Golden Leopard. In 2015, he returned to Locarno in competition as part of political sci-fi omnibus “Wonderland,” alongside another nine up-and-coming Swiss directors.
“Above all, I’m fascinated with people who live in a parallel universe, people that are still raw and edgy, that don’t try to be like everyone else, or are just unable to do so, because of their fears or limitations,” he said.
Short “Rene” already anticipated some key themes – social isolation, loneliness, love – which Nölle has later developed with his feature debut.
In “Aloys,” Austrian thesp Georg Friedrich (“The Piano Teacher”) plays a lonely, middle-aged private investigator who experiences life through a video camera he keeps recording 24 hours a day, obsessively watching tapes at home.
His life changes when is contacted by a mysterious woman who pulls him into a mind game known as “phone-walking.” Captivated by her voice, he discovers an imaginary universe that allows him to break out of his isolation.
“We live in times where everybody wants to be seen, everybody takes pictures of themselves, everybody crates a second, more brilliant self on the web. I was interested in a man who is invisible, a private eye, who sees everything through his camera, but nobody sees him. Until the day a stranger turns the camera on him,” Nölle said.
“The universe inside our heads is so much bigger than the physical reality. We spend so much time in our thoughts, dreams and fantasies. That’s where the idea of phone-walking came in. I feel it’s the phenomenon of our generation that withdraws more and more into a virtual world, a projection of reality,” he said.
Handled by Poland’s New Europe Film Sales, “Aloys” received a Cannes market screening on May 17, having already being acquired by distributors in territories such as Germany (Film Kino Text), the U.K. (Eureka), China (Lemon Tree), Eastern Europe (HBO Central Europe) and Spain (Atera).
The Fipresci Prize helped build awareness of the film, he recognized. “It’s a sort of stamp of quality, a reassurance for people who should fund my projects but find them too strange or risky,” he added.
For now, powerful German arthouse Pandora Film has teamed with “Aloys'” producer, Switzerland’s Hugofilm, to coproduce Nolle’s sophomore solo outing, a still-untitled “poetic action thriller.”
Developed at Nölle’s Zurich-based outfit 8horses – “a collective of hungry Swiss filmmakers,” in his own words – the project focuses on a young police officer loosing one of his senses but keeping it a secret because he’s afraid of not getting ahead in his career, which leads to a disaster at a demonstration. What follows is his escape from the authorities and a brutal confrontation with himself.
The film will be “very plot-driven, yet very sensorial as it’s radically told from his [the young police officer’s] perspective,” Nölle added.
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