Breathing

Roman Kogler, 19 years old, is serving time in a juvenile detention centre. He has already served half of his sentence, and could be released on probation, but his chances are poor: he doesn’t have family, and seems incapable of coping with society. After many failed attempts, Roman finds a probation job at the municipal morgue in Vienna. One day, Roman is faced with a dead woman who bears his family name. Even though it soon turns out that she is not his mother, Roman wonders about his past for the first time and starts looking for her. “It was important to me that an impression of being incidental was always present, and that, for example, long passages of silence aren’t perceived as being too pregnant with meaning, because there isn’t much talking beforehand either. What’s then said, however, always has meaning”, says Karl Markovics.