Washed Ashore

Josef Fuchs gazes out over the Danube before turning toward the camera and reciting a requiem for the nameless. The elderly graveyard keeper has been devotedly working here for 62 years now. He began in a time when the authorities still allowed people to fish bodies - the nameless dead - out of the river. In the early years, Josef pulled out some 50 drowned souls, many of whom had committed suicide, and gave them all a place in his cemetery. He has beautiful, morbid anecdotes for many of the deceased. The son of a woman who had drowned herself in the river a decade before shot himself in the head while visiting his mother's grave. Another man got completely drunk, cut his throat and plunged into the river. In addition to Josef Fuchs, documentary filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter also gives the floor to other "water people." Their stories revolve invariably around the loss of old values. A fisherman, clad in a typical Austrian feathered hat, is worried that fishing will be prohibited with the opening of a national park, and an old skipper and his wife can't find any young person interested in taking over their boat. By capturing the subjects in prolonged shots from stationary positions, the portraits become moving paintings. Geyrhalter intercuts them with scenes of daily life around the river, also shot in atmospheric, restrained black-and-white.