Very Cool!!!

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I give this movie an 8 for apparent authenticity and a 10 for subject matters. As I've thought many times, there is always something that's left out of any story. That "something" will usually make us less sympathetic to the "victim(s)". If Kathy's story is correct, there seems to have been malfeasance on the part of the Vienna police. If they would like to correct it with official statements, perhaps someone will redo the movie.I suspect that, since Aeryn was awarded a title, there was considerable envy from native Austrians. He probably "paraded" it around quite a bit. Of course, none of which entitled anyone to use violence against him. I'm not sure why he was given the title, if he wasn't an Austrian. Perhaps it was because he was liked and lived there. (He seemed to have a German accent in the video clips.) All in all, this movie deserves to be seen.

I absolutely have no doubt that the police were involved. They knew he was Mr.Gay Austria without being told,they lied about everything from beginning to end. Either one or more followed him into the bathhouse,or they saw him on street and did away with him quietly..the fisherman that supposedly heard him scream was them hearing him scream as they tossed him into the water or when they were beating him unconscious. Why this story hasn't been resolved is beyond me.Why gay groups are not helping more and getting these cops indicted as well as the owner of the Sauna is the real story. Corruption breeds Deception. But brute force could help refreshing some of their memories I'm sure.

On the one hand, you want to feel sympathy for the mother, Kathy Gilleran, whose son Aeryn has gone missing and, at this point, must be presumed dead. The circumstances surrounding his disappearance, based on what we are told with virtually no documentation or supporting evidence, are mysterious. Unfortunately her narration is so one- sided and obviously designed to portray a massive cover-up and sinister plot, that one is left wondering how much of her tale is factual and how much has been embellished to elevate the drama and to generate even more sympathy.Aeryn is gay, working for an agency of the UN in Vienna, suddenly disappears without a trace after reportedly running naked from the Kaiserbründl, a gay sauna & bath house and, it is speculated, who then jumped into a canal as an act of suicide.Kathy goes to Vienna to investigate. Supposedly when she first meets the police who are investigating the incident, they are unable to make eye contact with her and demonstrate a lack of interest in her or the case. Later, at the police station she informs them she is a cop and where she comes from cops look after cops … a comment that apparently doesn't impress them … and they are then described as aggressive towards her, make humiliating references to her son being gay, deny her water or the use of a toilet and inform her that they consider it all a case of "spontaneous suicide" typical amongst gays in Vienna. She reminds us at one point that the Austrian authorities in the past handed over the Jews & homosexuals to the Nazis and in her estimation not much has changed.She then seeks support and aid from the UN agency HR personnel, the US embassy, a gay bookstore owner, a gay police organization, some friends of Aeryn including someone she meets in front of the Kaiserbründl and who behaves quite strangely, some Austrian Green Party parliamentarians, and a private investigator. All of them, according to Kathy, are somewhat supportive but soon become reluctant to continue to offer help, seem to be stonewalling her and appear to be participants in a sinister and mysterious cover-up. Kathy even tells us at one point that as a cop she knows if you have a dead body the easiest thing to do is to dismiss it as a suicide, possibly not realizing that she's telling us that she knows how to fashion the "facts" in any case to suit a desired result … something that raises questions about her own credibility. Even in Kathy's recollection of Aeryn's coming out as gay to both her and to his grandmother, her version of the events is rather different from what Aeryn tells us in a two minute clip that accompanied the longer "documentary." As the police should know all too well, eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable and are often colored by intentional or unintentional influences.Certainly the police could be dedicated homophobes, something that would hardly be unique to Vienna. Certainly all those whose help she sought could be eager to embrace the prejudiced idea that a gay man at a well known gay venue could act irrationally and might become suicidal … and who leap to the equally bigoted view that being gay he was probably into drugs that would feed the irrational behavior. And certainly no one could fault any mother for wanting to know for certain what happened to her son and who wanted to find him in order to achieve some level of closure.The loss of her son in a foreign country, with no certainty as to the events leading up to his disappearance and with no tangible proof that he is dead must be an unending trauma for his mother. That her son was gay and that his disappearance and death were readily dismissed by those who wished to put distance between themselves and the case as quickly as possible is certainly believable. Unfortunately this film loses credibility because it is simply a one-sided, understandably emotional account of events with no real supporting evidence or documentation or any commentary from those who have, in essence, been made out to be at best indifferent and at worst involved in some sort of conspiracy and cover up. Being gay and an American who has lived most of his adult life outside the US I certainly feel sympathetic regarding the tragedy of Aeryn's unexplained disappearance and his mother's frustrating experience dealing with officialdom. But when it comes to rating the presentation in this film, it is so obviously one-sided and self- promoting that I give it no more than a 5.

I really do not understand why this film has such a low rating. While it may be because of the production values, which I admit are not the best, the cinematography is at times quite amateurish, the structure of the piece is excellent and it presents the information in a very objective fashion and is as fascinating as it is harrowing from start to finish. I saw the film about a year ago at the Viennale with Aeryns mother Kathy present and I really felt inspired by her commitment to finding out what really happened to her son. Her immense strength to go on is amazing and shows just how deep the love of a family member can run in times of great adversity. It would be fantastic if this film had more exposure as it shows just how corrupt and narrow minded the police in Austria can be, The way Kathy was handled and the way the case was handled in general is quite frankly disgusting.Vienna, the "best city in the world" has a lot of strange things going on beneath its surface which need to be addressed before I believe it can truly be viewed as a prime example of an international metropolitan city, it has always reminded me of a Lynch film in many ways and this documentary simply strengthens that idea. The cover-up which seems to be going on here shows an extremely eerie underbelly to the facade of Vienna as a classical, safe and problem free city. I highly recommend this film to anyone who values fairness and transparency in the handling of crimes related to homosexuality, which were perhaps 50 years ago viewed as extremely volatile situations in many European cities and are now however largely treated on a level playing field to all other criminal cases in places like New York or London. Vienna needs to catch up fast in the way it treats the LGBT community as well as ethnic minorities and this film definitely shines a glaring spotlight on the former of these two problems.