IA car is parked somewhere on the outskirts of a settlement in Romania. A man is behind the wheel. His gaze is directed at an anonymous block of flats, a building that obviously dates back to the communist era. The sky is grey, the snow will soon be dirty, but there is still a semblance of purity over the landscape.
The man watches a couple of boys frolicking in the snow. Eventually he pulls himself together, gets out of the car, forms a big snowball and rushes into battle. He’s a stranger here, and he knows very well that he embodies the opposite of what the boys radiate for him: impartiality, joy in playing, childlike energy.
For a few moments they just absorb him into their movement, let him get them into fights, don’t ask why an adult is joining them. After all, it is the man himself who withdraws, and no sooner is he a few meters away than he can no longer hold back the tears. Because he knows he’s just crossed a dangerous line.
The man’s name is Ewald Scholz, he’s from Austria and works as an engineer in a power plant in Romania. Ewald is a pedophile. The snowball fight was a sexual experience for him. He broke out of his loneliness for a moment, rolled in the snow with the boys, went just far enough for them not to become suspicious. Now he’s back in the car. But a plan forms in his head.
What was the accusation?
Ewald Scholz is the main character in the Austrian feature film “Sparta” by Ulrich Seidl. Last fall, shortly before the planned world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), “Spiegel” published a major story that made serious allegations against the director. He would have exploited and manipulated the child actors during the shooting in Romania, would have elicited the consent of the parents without explaining exactly what “Sparta” was about.
Hans-Michael Rehberg (left) and Georg Friedrich in “Sparta”
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Image: Neue Visionen film distribution
Toronto canceled the premiere, in San Sebastian “Sparta” ran shortly afterwards, and now there is a theatrical release, for which the distributors are hardly committed. As with many comparable matters – most recently again with the allegations against Til Schweiger – an ambiguity arises after the publication of an investigative story, which results from the fact that there is often nothing sufficiently tangible from a legal point of view, but that there is too much in the room for rehabilitation stands.
Ulrich Seidl was acquitted by the Austrian Film Institute insofar as there were no sufficient reasons for claiming back the funding. In concrete terms, however, his situation will probably only become clear when he submits new projects. For three decades he was one of the most successful but also one of the most controversial Austrian filmmakers. It will be seen how the juries, directors and committees react to further projects.
Together with “Rimini”, which ran at the Berlinale two years ago, “Sparta” forms a diptych built around a common father figure: Ekkehart (Hans-Michael Rehberg in his last role) dozes off in a retirement home. In the dementia he only gets strong signals, which mostly have to do with the Second World War, such as the song “I had a comrade” or “Today we own Germany and tomorrow the whole world”. In “Rimini” Seidl had talked about one of Ekkehart’s sons, who was looking for a living as a pop singer and gigolo in the Italian seaside resort during the winter season.
