Film: Goethe-Kino: Elfi Mikesch: Fever

Eva Mattes and Martin Wuttke star in Elfi Mikesch’s second feature film inspired by memories of her father, a Foreign Legionnaire stationed in Morocco, Algeria, and Syria in the 1920s and 1930s. Set in 1952 and the present, the film alternates between the perspective of eleven‑year‑old Franzi, who struggles to understand and process what she learns about war and violence through her father’s photographs and volatile behaviour, and that of her adult self, who sets out on a journey to Novi Sad - a station in her father’s military life and a place he once wished to take her.

Austria, Luxembourg 2014, 80 mins, colour, digital, 80 mins, with English subtitles.
Director: Elfi Mikesch, Screenplay: Elfi Mikesch, Kathrin Resetarits.

Elfi Mikesch had treated the subject of the Legionnaire Father more than 20 years earlier film Marcocain (1983), taking a completely different approach. Marocain will be shown on 21 May 2026 as part of the Elfi Mikesch series.

More About the Film

Elfi Mikesch: It was important to me to be able to use the means of a feature film to talk of violence, the extreme circumstances and the cruelty of war without resorting to action sequences. In Fever the war takes place in the child’s imagination. In 1952, Franzi is eleven years old; she is a child of the Second World War, but she knows of her own father’s wars only from stories. How does a child come to terms with this confrontation? What does she imagine when she finds no answer to her questions? I was interested in this different, fragmentary perspective on history. (Source: Interview with Elfi Mikesch on the occasion of the premiere of Fever at the 2014 Berlinale, translated from German.)

Austria, Luxembourg 2014, 80 mins, colour, digital, , with English subtitles.
Director: Elfi Mikesch, Screenplay: Elfi Mikesch, Kathrin Resetarits, Camera: Jerzy Palacz, Editing: Pia Dumont, Music: André Mergenthaler, Executive Producer: André Fetzer, Alfie Lang-Král, Producers: Bady Minck, Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu, Production Manager: Joe Kotroczo, Production Design: Christina Schaffer, Costumes: Brigitta Fink, Make-up: Béatrice Stéphany. Production Companies: Amour Fou Luxembourg, Amour Fou Vienna, Albolina Film
With Carolina Cardoso, Eva Mattes, Martin Wuttke, Nicole Max, Louis Wagner, Luc Lamesch, Sascha Ley, Suzana Vukovic, Astrid Weiss, Oleg Zhukov, Luc Feit, André Jung, Nilton Martins, Marie Jung, Konstantin Rommelfangen, Igor Orovac, Iren Abraham, Rade Kojadinovic, Aleksandra Pleskonjic.