Vita Soul Wilmering

Whirling through the solar system is a physics-defying planet named Insomnia where time stands still. When an elderly artist is diagnosed with incurable cancer, his doctor suggests a visit to this celestial body as a way of stemming the progression of the disease. With the help of his filmmaker daughter, the artist prepares for a momentous interplanetary journey.

Spiegl tells a universal story of fleeing, through an organic mix of road movie, opera, and re-enacted memories. Yitschak Spiegl was the foster daughter of a Czech mother, and was living as a woman when in 1988 he fled Communist Czechoslovakia. Fragments of his personal history emerge as he visits places in Austria with filmmaker Vita Soul Wilmering where he spent time as a refugee. Chance meetings with people on the street unintentionally form a recurring thread that links up themes of exclusion and pigeonholing, which shape the painful undertone of Spiegl’s life story.