Tempo

From Viennale

Stefan Ruzowitzky’s feature debut follows bicycle couriers Jojo and Bastian as they race through Vienna’s streets in search of anything but their destinations. What matters are raves, romance and the next adventure. By day, Jojo, a newcomer from the provinces, throws himself headlong into the city’s traffic; by night, he immerses himself in Vienna’s booming techno scene... TEMPO is both an exhilarating urban adventure and a vivid time capsule of mid-1990s Vienna, when the city briefly became a European hotspot for electronic music. Before embarking on his international career— which would eventually include music videos for bands such as *NSYNC and an Academy Award for DIE FÄLSCHER (2007)—Ruzowitzky channelled his background in the music video world into a film of restless momentum and rapid-fire editing. Yet beneath its kinetic surface lies what the director himself called “a modern-day Parzival story”: a young man travelling from one “castle” to the next in search of love, identity and his place in the world. Propelled by pounding beats and the intoxicating sense that anything might happen next, the film perfectly captures a city—and a generation—on the move. (Florian Widegger)