the öAustrian sci-fi film “Rubikon” is available from December 16th. can be seen exclusively in the CANAL+ app.
Who says that Austrian filmmakers can’t shoot a great science fiction film, like their colleagues in Hollywood do with constant perfection, as if the genre belonged to them? After all, Karl May was never in America and wrote regarding things he didn’t understand anything regarding – well, the comparison is often flawed, if only because the cinema takes place in the head when it’s written down, but here it’s something big on the screen wants to become something that has not yet been tried in Austria.
“Rubikon” is the name of the debut work of the Carinthian filmmaker Magdalena Lauritsch, who won the Austrian Film Prize in 2015 for her short film “Rote Flecken”. The 34-year-old filmmaker wrote the screenplay for “Rubikon” together with Jessica Lind and, thanks to local subsidies, also got the necessary budget together to stage it.
As with most sci-fi stories, “Rubicon” is regarding nothing less than the apocalypse and the extermination of humanity: In the year 2056, the soldier Hannah Wagner (Julia Franz Richter) is together with the scientists Gavin Abbott (George Blagden) and Dimitri Krylov (Mark Ivanir) aboard the Rubicon space station. They are researching an algae project that is intended to provide humanity with a permanent supply of oxygen and food. Alone: The efforts come a little late. Because on earth the sky darkens dramatically, everything seems to be swallowed up, the connection to earth breaks off. The crew, which consists of a total of six members, is now faced with the question of whether to return to earth to see what happened or whether to remain in the spaceship, which is safe for the time being. Torturing hours of decisions begin…
The images of the cameramen Xiaosu Han and Andreas Thalhammer are impeccable, the visual implementation, the equipment of the spaceship and the sci-fi sets – everything was filmed in a Viennese studio during 29 days of shooting – meet the expectations of a modern science fiction film Definitely, the role models in Hollywood copied that very closely. In addition, the filmmaker operates here with a second genre, the chamber play. Because most of the action takes place in the locked spaceship – which significantly increases the tension between the characters. The chamber play is quite comparable to great role models such as “The Martian” or “Gravity”, or even the thriller “Oxygen”.
“Rubikon” proves that you don’t need a Hollywood studio for decent sci-fi pictures, but above all a lot of passion and enthusiasm. Maybe a first impulse to see more sci-fi productions from Austria soon.
