Screened as part of the MAD WORLD short film series at this year’s Cambridge Film Festival, Martin Bargiel’s AUGENBLICKE is a sound, stylish psycho-thriller which melds the shabby baroque of Roy Andersson with the garish sodium sickness of David Fincher. Our hero is Schenker, a stooped, chainsmoking loner in a noisy apartment block. He’s grown uncertain in his solitude, to the extent that he and we are never sure whether he is knee deep in one of those cruel, semi-lucid dreams which ape the dull quotidian of reality, only to hurl our assumptions scornfully askew at every turn.
The camera clings to Schenker’s heady POV only to duck away, blinking and cringing in confusion – lolling drunkenly on tabletops or wet paving stones as we struggle along with Schenker to make sense of his own narrative. The heavily evocative hypnagogic segues from one reality to another are constructed with deft restraint, and Bargiel uses touches of CGI as an augment rather than a crutch. The pace and editing are so confident and beguiling that even a couple of jump scares strike out as dynamic and not trite. The natural distortion of condensation and streetlights, along with the ebb and flow of the sound design convey the central character’s depersonalisation, driving him to a point where he will accept any concrete reality that he can cling to – even if that means admitting to murder.
Bargiel has been working as a freelance film director for over five years, and his examination of child poverty “Finn & Tom” won 1st prize in the cinematic commercial competition, “Zukunftsgestalten Initiative – against child poverty”. AUGENBLICKE has been screened at 25 film festivals all around the world and continues to accrue nominations and awards for merits such as inventive storytelling. We hope to catch up with Martin soon to find out about the three screenplays he has under development, all of which he plans to direct.
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