26/02/2026 - BERLINALE 2026: Sebastian Brameshuber’s pensive road movie follows an elderly ride-share driver criss-crossing Austria, and his exchanges with a diverse group of passengers

Some people feel most at home on the road. That is the case for Bobby (Bobby Sommer, playing a close version of himself), a retired musician who spends most of his days travelling back and forth on Austria’s A1 Autobahn, ostensibly to visit his former bandmate Arthur, who’s bedridden from a coma in a Salzburg hospital, but also for the sheer good company of the ride-share passengers he picks up from an app. An ode at once to solitude and companionship, and to memory and history, Sebastian Brameshuber’s Berlinale Panorama premiere London [+see also:
interview: Sebastian Brameshuber
film profile] is a very well-meaning film, full of the elegant formalism and austerity much appreciated in Austrian cinema, yet flawed as it tries to encompass the breadth of the highway and a nation.

An issue is its over-reliance on a symbolic register: the array of passengers — often generations younger than Bobby, and referencing a panorama of modern European identities — are too neatly chosen to represent something beyond themselves and, across its ample running time, become too conveniently a cross-section of everything a film like this ‘ought’ to include. In spite of the political urgency and relevance of incorporating a young Austrian soldier, a Ukrainian refugee, itinerant poorly paid workers and multiple queer characters, by focusing on so many elements of social concern, it cannot be profound or trenchant about any one in particular.

Its minimalist cinematic language - an economy of shots taking in the driver’s and passenger seats, alongside a beautiful windscreen view of the highway ahead with a large depth of field - also gestures towards realism, but ultimately settles into a more liminal space, where we become aware of the cinematic artifice required to make all the pieces, or fragments, fit. Sommer - a culture maven in Vienna’s music and film worlds - previously delivered an acclaimed performance in Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours [+see also:
trailer
film profile], in which he played an attendant at the city’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, and this new performance, and the film itself, feel like a spiritual companion piece, albeit in a familiar form for this kind of cinema, with its rectilinear visual patterns of the built environment, glancing contemplations of history, and a suppressed sense of melancholy. In other words, Wim Wenders spiritually overshadows London, alongside his presence on the festival’s embattled competition jury.

Bobby’s attachment to Arthur, his bandmate in the UK capital during its countercultural height, is one of the film’s more mysterious touches. As he opens up after breaking the ice with his passengers, we learn that they had a turbulent relationship and, whilst it might be an over-reading, his wish to be at Arthur’s silent bedside equally gives the impression of an intimate partner seeking a final physical proximity. Although “Pale Blue Eyes” by The Velvet Underground is heard non-diegetically late in the film, another famous track, “Waiting for My Man”, is also referenced in dialogue, which seems to be another clue. Brameshuber sincerely conveys a great deal of emotion; amidst the sometimes clotted verbiage and exposition, you feel its weight in every metre of the highway.

London was produced by Austrian company Panama Film. International sales are handled by Square Eyes.