Starring: Thomas Schubert, Karin Lischka, Georg Friedrich
Director: Karl Markovics
Running Time: 90 mins
Certificate: 15
Release Date: September 10th 2012

Austria’s official entry for the Foreign Language gong at last year’s Oscar, Breathing is the sort of film that rewards patience, as it starts out slow and almost deliberately obtuse, before revealing an ever more absorbing story.

Roman Kugler (Thomas Schubert) is an 18-year-old locked up in a youth detention centre who’s allowed out on day release to go to work. After one job falls apart, he starts working at a morgue, which brings him face-to-face with death in ways he hadn’t expected. With the hearing that could see him released coming up, he starts to come to terms with the crime he was locked up for, as well as trying to find some sort of reconciliation with his past in children’s homes and his sense of abandonment. [Read more…]