Singapore International Film Festival 2018
Angelo
Language
German - subtitles to be advised
Director
Markus Schleinzer
Cast
Makita Samba, Alba Rohrwacher, Larisa Faber
Synopsis
Angelo, an African boy recently arrived in Vienna via slave boat, is taken into the household of a noblewoman who’s determined to raise him as her idealised vision of man—or, perhaps, of god. His blackness starkly visible in a circle of powdered grandees, Angelo grows up into an adult whose idea of himself is shaped by that artificial environment, and the expectations heaped upon him by those both fascinated by and contemptuous of him.
Call it the Habsburg version of Get Out. The scorching intersection of race, colonialism and 18th-century European aristocracy is treated with cool, formal elegance in this film by Markus Schleinzer. Angelo premiered in the Platform section of the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.