THE SOUFFLEUR
Special Features: North American Premiere
An American in Vienna, Lucius (Willem Dafoe) has managed the famed Hotel InterContinental for 30 years, but the once-luxurious accommodation has seen better days. For Lucius, though, it is more than just a hotel or a job — it is his whole identity. He obsesses over the restaurant’s falling soufflé; he offers guests champagne at the storied hotel bar; he blurs the line between employees and family, even counting his daughter Lilly as one of his crew. When an Argentine businessman (filmmaker Gastón Solnicki) announces he is going to buy the hotel, it sends Lucius into a full-on paranoid tailspin. As he spends his remaining time at the hotel remembering the glory days and scheming against the incoming owner, Lucius starts to accept that he is a vestige of a vanishing world. Unlike the InterContinental’s soufflé, Solnicki and Dafoe rise to the occasion, crafting a surreal black comedy with just enough bite to balance its melancholic sweetness. –Josh Gardner
Official Selection, 2025 Venice Film Festival. DIR/SCR/PROD Gastón Solnicki; SCR Julia Niemann; PROD Eugenio Fernández Abril, Paolo Calamita, Gabriele Kranzelbinder. Austria/Argentina, 2025, color, 78 min. In English, German, Spanish and Italian with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Run Time: 78 Minutes
Opening Date: Wednesday, December 03, 2025
Genre: Drama
