Nicola Filippelli

Molly wants to hear a story so Leo tells her about how he lost his reflection that morning while shaving. Austria's submission to the Academy Award foreign film competition in 1984.

In October 1936, a high official in the Austrian government receives a letter from a German Jewish woman with whom he had an affair in 1925 asking him to help place an 11-year-old, half Jewish boy in a good Austrian school. Is the child his? Should he help? And above all should he help now, at a time when Nazis are becoming powerful in Austria?

Phaidros is based on Plato's eponymous dialogue and plays in an LBQT+ milieu of a present-day metropolis. The actor Emil is meant to embody the character of the poet Phaedrus in a battle of words with Werner Maria, who slips into the role of Socrates. When the borders between friendship and sexual initiation soon blur beyond the events on stage, too, the shrill, carnivalesque scenario turns into grotesque love triangles and quadrangles, which ultimately even cause a casualty.

Sternberg lands with his parachute in the bed of a stewardess, in the car of an airport employee and finally on a freeway service area. There he meets Harry. Harry is blind and he joins Sternberg who is looking for his Hedi. Together they land in the flat of the model married couple, Alf and Evy. With his appearance he upsets the day-to-day life of the couple.