Wiener Blues – The Loneliest Man in Town

A film by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel. Starts November 11th at the fsk. In german.

[Credits] [Tickets & Termine] [Trailer]

Al Cook lives sur­roun­ded by memo­ries. His apart­ment and base­ment stu­dio are crammed full of books, video­tapes and vinyl records – all that remains of a life once ful­ly lived. Here, time seems to stand still while, bey­ond the­se four walls, the world has moved on. The blues, the music that means ever­y­thing to Al, is slow­ly being for­got­ten. His home­town no lon­ger feels like home, and the loss of his bel­oved wife, Silvia, still weighs hea­vy on his heart. When a ruthl­ess real estate com­pa­ny tar­gets his home for demo­li­ti­on, his refu­ge is taken away, lea­ving him to face the ruins of his life. As Al is forced to let go of his tre­asu­res one by one, he must ask hims­elf the pain­ful ques­ti­on: How do you move for­ward when memo­ries are all you have left? In the face of total loss, he choo­ses a radi­cal new beginning.

„Despite all the nost­al­gic melan­cho­ly that echo­es through this film and the cha­rac­ter of Al Cooke, The Loneliest Man in Town is at the same time a life-affir­ming, at times very fun­ny and excee­din­gly ten­der film. When the cool blues musi­ci­an places flowers on the altar at home for his late wife, or awk­ward­ly flirts with a for­mer lover who dum­ped him becau­se, whilst she was into the Beatles, he pre­fer­red Elvis records, then the­se small ges­tu­res strike you right in the heart and also reve­al the loneli­ne­ss alre­a­dy hin­ted at in the title (which, in turn, comes from a song that Cooke per­forms at one point in front of a very small audi­ence). (…)
And Cooke / Koch hims­elf fits seam­less­ly into the long line of cha­rac­ters from Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s pre­vious films, who are often musi­ci­ans, cir­cus per­for­mers, tra­vel­lers or actors and actres­ses. Yet the direc­ting duo are not par­ti­cu­lar­ly inte­res­ted in the glitz and gla­mour asso­cia­ted with such lives. Rather, with deep affec­tion for tho­se they por­tray, they reve­al all the frail­ties and frac­tures within a life that the­se peo­p­le have dedi­ca­ted to art, regard­less of mate­ri­al secu­ri­ty. All their atten­ti­on, all their love, is direc­ted towards them. The fact that they repea­ted­ly suc­ceed in making such magni­fi­cent, utter­ly uni­que, immense­ly humo­rous and at the same time deep­ly moving films about true mas­ters of (sur­vi­val) art, such as Alois Koch, makes Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel excep­tio­nal figu­res and their films tru­ly pre­cious tre­asu­res, which, with all their warmth and empa­thy, one would not wish to be wit­hout.„
Joachim Kurz | Kino-Zeit

Credits:

AT 2026, 86 mins, German
Directed by: Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel
Screenplay: Tizza Covi
Cinematography: Rainer Frimmel
Editing: Tizza Covi, Emily Artmann
Starring: Alois Koch, Brigitte Meduna, Alfred Blechinger, Flurina Schneider

Trailer:

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