Austerlitz

Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor and fights the English, Austrians and Russians in 1802.

The new film from Sergei Loznitsa (Maidan, The Event) is a stark yet rich and complex portrait of tourists visiting the grounds of former Nazi extermination camps, and a sometimes sardonic study of the relationship (or the clash) between contemporary culture and the sanctity of the site.

“You buy a book. You don’t really know why. It lies around, and then one day you open it, almost absentmindedly. And there you are, facing your own innermost secrets.” So begins Stan Neumann’s cinematic adaptation of W.G. Sebald’s award-winning novel, Austerlitz. The vaulted and majestic space of the railway station in Antwerp is where our journey really starts with actor Denis Lavant (Holy Motors) addressing the camera directly, and musing on the curious nature of railway stations. This bravura opening is startling, charming, and like the unnamed narrator of the book, you surrender to the proceedings and perambulate alongside Lavant, as he journeys through the great buildings of Europe, faded and shuttered hotels and grand colonnades with broken windows.

Between epic and legend, this fictional documentary recounts the longest and fastest march in the history of war, a 'blitzkrieg' leading to a dazzling victory, that which Napoleon and his great army won

First engagement of the War of the Third Coalition and one of Napoleon’s greatest victories at Austerlitz in 1805.