20/02/2026 - BERLINALE 2026: Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s docufiction comedy introduces us to the world of Austrian blues troubadour Al Cook

“I guess that’s why they call it the blues,” a very different musician to the one depicted here once sang. Indeed, co-directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel know that the blues is a state of mind as much as a musical genre, and Al Cook (or Alois Koch, playing himself), the intrepid subject of their new movie The Loneliest Man in Town [+see also:
interview: Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel
film profile], has a severe case of them. Yet after all, that’s what makes him so authentic, in spite of the fact that he’s never even visited the music’s place of origin in the southern USA. Often as funny as it is melancholy, the Austrian filmmaking duo’s new feature has premiered in the Berlinale’s main competition.

While it’s an apt companion piece to Covi and Frimmel’s Venice Orizzonti prizewinner Vera [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel
film profile], whether the film could be classified as a fiction feature or a documentary is absolutely up for contention, as well as possibly moot. In early interviews, they’ve merely referred to it as a “feature film”, knowing that if you say it’s one or the other of those aforementioned terms, the pleasing ambiguity is shut off. If their modus operandi evokes a far less confrontational Ulrich Seidl, given their Austrian heritage, it has a genuine affinity with current US film legends like Sean Baker and the Safdies (and Baker has incidentally cast Vera’s star, Vera Gemma, in his Anora follow-up).

So, as we watch Cook cope with his loneliness, and life’s slings and arrows, we aren’t certain whether the events are a fictionalised re-enactment or a complete contrivance, and this confusion is surely intentional. Either way, the main conflict arises as a sleazy real-estate firm wishes to redevelop his Vienna apartment block, where he seems to be the only remaining resident. But it’s not an exaggeration to say that Cook and the building are one and the same: his lovingly DIY-style home studio is in the basement, in addition to a carefully maintained archive of all his records and career mementos.

Otherwise, the screenplay, credited solely to Covi, doesn’t even insist that this is so bleak a turn of events. To cite her and Frimmel’s statements again, Cook’s career – given he’s extremely talented, as the recorded song snippets and diegetic live performances show – was possibly hamstrung by his absolute fidelity to his old-school values, not to mention the retro aspects of his music. Although still deeply mourning his late wife, Silvia, he tentatively reconnects with an old flame, Brigitte (Brigitte Meduna), and life forges on, as if he were a troubadour carrying his guitar case down a dusty trail. 

The Loneliest Man in Town should greatly please fans of Aki Kaurismäki, yet if the Finnish maestro has been dinged a little over his past few features for their familiarity, the more contemporary “documentary” grounding of this film makes it feel more vital and, like Baker’s movies, fizzier and lighter on its feet, removed from the obligations of social realism. If it has its own drawbacks, of a stock, humanist scenario, and a slight lack of urgency itself, well, them’s the blues. Although, with its champions like Al, the blues will last forever.

The Loneliest Man in Town is an Austrian production, staged by the directors’ own production company, Vento Film. Its international sales are handled by Be for Films.