I absolutely have no doubt that the police were involved. They knew he was Mr.Gay Austria without being told,they lied about everything from beginning to end. Either one or more followed him into the bathhouse,or they saw him on street and did away with him quietly..the fisherman that supposedly heard him scream was them hearing him scream as they tossed him into the water or when they were beating him unconscious. Why this story hasn't been resolved is beyond me.Why gay groups are not helping more and getting these cops indicted as well as the owner of the Sauna is the real story. Corruption breeds Deception. But brute force could help refreshing some of their memories I'm sure.
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ds-4791512 January 2017
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I give this movie an 8 for apparent authenticity and a 10 for subject matters. As I've thought many times, there is always something that's left out of any story. That "something" will usually make us less sympathetic to the "victim(s)". If Kathy's story is correct, there seems to have been malfeasance on the part of the Vienna police. If they would like to correct it with official statements, perhaps someone will redo the movie.
I suspect that, since Aeryn was awarded a title, there was considerable envy from native Austrians. He probably "paraded" it around quite a bit. Of course, none of which entitled anyone to use violence against him. I'm not sure why he was given the title, if he wasn't an Austrian. Perhaps it was because he was liked and lived there. (He seemed to have a German accent in the video clips.) All in all, this movie deserves to be seen. -
phelix-josie2 May 2020Maybe there should be two movies, one with the extensive emotional scenes for all the mothers who want to cry along... and another one for those of us satisfied with one brief cry.
Even if the socio-political climate in Vienna is so corrupt that every friendly ear is too afraid to help... or talk, the documentary mentions the private citizens by name, so it might as well explain where they went... what their responses were to each roadblock.
The gay bookstore owner. Was he one and done? What did he have to say to the aggressively cruel stonewalling done at the meeting with the ostensible LGBQ police representative? I assume the "investigator" who mocked Kathy was that 'friendly' contact... though Kathy does not say so explicitly.
Her descents into semi-coherent emotionalism is understandable. But why did the director give it so much footage? Was an emotional appeal considered that much stronger than focus on facts?
There were facts about the police, the names of the two Kafkanoir detectives, with their bare, cynical cruelty. There were a couple first names of UNIDO staff, but when given they were often in passing, along with occasional mention of their capacity. But it was hard to keep track of, and relationships/contexts weren't reinforced and followed up on for context.
I wish the director hadn't made it so much "Kathy's Story" and had instead had her round out her accounts, including naming all names... at least officials, politicians, UNIDOS and sauna staff. What was the name, rank and situation of the LGBQ-friendly cop? Was it just the UNIDO psychologist, that guy and Kathy? Why did UNIDO send a psychologist with her? Was it that same person who was also in HR? What did the bookstore guy have to say? Did he not care to help afterward? Was he too scared? Couldn't be arsed? Is Vienna so corrupt that their aren't queer activist orgs able and willing to shout all this long and loud, make demands, conduct media and action campaigns? It was clear from a distance that the police org considered it a sport to jerk around mothers of missing sons. Certainly no alliance was really viable there.
Where did her son's partner go? Was the neighbor just a neighbor, not a friend? Did Aeryn have other friends, workmates... who could/would help?
Considering previous scandals involving UN child sex rings, and UNIDOS doing a such a quick so-sorry-for-your-loss-now-GET-OUT ... are the sauna, cops, and UN in collusion?
Who all were involved in the big new investigation... that, of course, was then delegated to the police... to investigate themselves ( much like ... everywhere :( ) ?
What grassroots outreach was done besides one mother walking around Vienna with a candle and a picture of her son? Is there a website or subreddit where witnesses / informants could submit info or vid/images, and people could discuss?
Could we see the correspondence with the embassy, politicians, LE contacts?
In this documentary, for viewers like me, the tears obscure the story. I care... but not enough to walk step by step with a stranger through all their tears... especially when it seems the emotional response is robbing precious moments of possibly meaningful action.
To myself and others I often say "Crisis is no time to panic. There's too much at stake. We can panic when it's over, across a pint."
I imagine this is a powerful movie for those adept at grieving along. For me it's a 6, tops. -
oliver45415 November 2012I really do not understand why this film has such a low rating. While it may be because of the production values, which I admit are not the best, the cinematography is at times quite amateurish, the structure of the piece is excellent and it presents the information in a very objective fashion and is as fascinating as it is harrowing from start to finish.
I saw the film about a year ago at the Viennale with Aeryns mother Kathy present and I really felt inspired by her commitment to finding out what really happened to her son. Her immense strength to go on is amazing and shows just how deep the love of a family member can run in times of great adversity. It would be fantastic if this film had more exposure as it shows just how corrupt and narrow minded the police in Austria can be, The way Kathy was handled and the way the case was handled in general is quite frankly disgusting.
Vienna, the "best city in the world" has a lot of strange things going on beneath its surface which need to be addressed before I believe it can truly be viewed as a prime example of an international metropolitan city, it has always reminded me of a Lynch film in many ways and this documentary simply strengthens that idea. The cover-up which seems to be going on here shows an extremely eerie underbelly to the facade of Vienna as a classical, safe and problem free city. I highly recommend this film to anyone who values fairness and transparency in the handling of crimes related to homosexuality, which were perhaps 50 years ago viewed as extremely volatile situations in many European cities and are now however largely treated on a level playing field to all other criminal cases in places like New York or London. Vienna needs to catch up fast in the way it treats the LGBT community as well as ethnic minorities and this film definitely shines a glaring spotlight on the former of these two problems. -
pensacolacomputer6 March 2020Recommended...Very emotional doc...I really felt for the mother...really felt her pain...
I hope you one day find out what happened to your son..and you are able to bring him home...and put your mind and heart at ease...
He sounded like an extraordinary human being...Thank you for sharing your story... -
Kirpianuscus2 January 2022A police woman . Her son, working in Vienna, is missing. Her efforts for have explanations from Austrian police and authorities about her boy fate. And humiliations, silences, dark secrets, hypothesis, help from some friends and the years passing. It is more than the portrait of a case but a powerful image of similar situations. For few reasons, a gay story/ manifesto. For others - image of corruption. In essence, only the cry of a mother. And her desperated fight.
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jshynd11 February 2023Hope this message can flood the internet & bring a flood of insistence to the Austrian Government:
Austrians & Americans who are unsatisfied with how this case (Aeryn M. J. Gillern Disappeared in Vienna October 29, 2007) Has-Not Been-Addressed can contact -- The Austrian Press and Information Service in the United States Embassy of Austria 3524 International Court, NW Washington, D. C. 20008 USA -- and insist that the highest level of the Austrian government look into the "Cover-Up" which has been overseen by the Vienna Police Department (likely implicated in Aeryn Gillern's disappearance/death). And that the Case Files be released to for investigation by an Independent International Team. -
Suradit4 March 2015On the one hand, you want to feel sympathy for the mother, Kathy Gilleran, whose son Aeryn has gone missing and, at this point, must be presumed dead. The circumstances surrounding his disappearance, based on what we are told with virtually no documentation or supporting evidence, are mysterious. Unfortunately her narration is so one- sided and obviously designed to portray a massive cover-up and sinister plot, that one is left wondering how much of her tale is factual and how much has been embellished to elevate the drama and to generate even more sympathy.
Aeryn is gay, working for an agency of the UN in Vienna, suddenly disappears without a trace after reportedly running naked from the Kaiserbründl, a gay sauna & bath house and, it is speculated, who then jumped into a canal as an act of suicide.
Kathy goes to Vienna to investigate. Supposedly when she first meets the police who are investigating the incident, they are unable to make eye contact with her and demonstrate a lack of interest in her or the case. Later, at the police station she informs them she is a cop and where she comes from cops look after cops a comment that apparently doesn't impress them and they are then described as aggressive towards her, make humiliating references to her son being gay, deny her water or the use of a toilet and inform her that they consider it all a case of "spontaneous suicide" typical amongst gays in Vienna. She reminds us at one point that the Austrian authorities in the past handed over the Jews & homosexuals to the Nazis and in her estimation not much has changed.
She then seeks support and aid from the UN agency HR personnel, the US embassy, a gay bookstore owner, a gay police organization, some friends of Aeryn including someone she meets in front of the Kaiserbründl and who behaves quite strangely, some Austrian Green Party parliamentarians, and a private investigator. All of them, according to Kathy, are somewhat supportive but soon become reluctant to continue to offer help, seem to be stonewalling her and appear to be participants in a sinister and mysterious cover-up.
Kathy even tells us at one point that as a cop she knows if you have a dead body the easiest thing to do is to dismiss it as a suicide, possibly not realizing that she's telling us that she knows how to fashion the "facts" in any case to suit a desired result something that raises questions about her own credibility. Even in Kathy's recollection of Aeryn's coming out as gay to both her and to his grandmother, her version of the events is rather different from what Aeryn tells us in a two minute clip that accompanied the longer "documentary." As the police should know all too well, eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable and are often colored by intentional or unintentional influences.
Certainly the police could be dedicated homophobes, something that would hardly be unique to Vienna. Certainly all those whose help she sought could be eager to embrace the prejudiced idea that a gay man at a well known gay venue could act irrationally and might become suicidal and who leap to the equally bigoted view that being gay he was probably into drugs that would feed the irrational behavior. And certainly no one could fault any mother for wanting to know for certain what happened to her son and who wanted to find him in order to achieve some level of closure.
The loss of her son in a foreign country, with no certainty as to the events leading up to his disappearance and with no tangible proof that he is dead must be an unending trauma for his mother. That her son was gay and that his disappearance and death were readily dismissed by those who wished to put distance between themselves and the case as quickly as possible is certainly believable. Unfortunately this film loses credibility because it is simply a one-sided, understandably emotional account of events with no real supporting evidence or documentation or any commentary from those who have, in essence, been made out to be at best indifferent and at worst involved in some sort of conspiracy and cover up.
Being gay and an American who has lived most of his adult life outside the US I certainly feel sympathetic regarding the tragedy of Aeryn's unexplained disappearance and his mother's frustrating experience dealing with officialdom. But when it comes to rating the presentation in this film, it is so obviously one-sided and self- promoting that I give it no more than a 5. -
tthirdbro22 June 2020These parents raise their children and tell them "you can be anything you want to be". Never teaching them the realities of life. The parents soke their own lives in immortality and confuse these growing teenage minds with "religious fortitude" and the pressure to live up to being "accepted" by God, yet hypocrites to their own pressures. Thus confusing the heck out of these boys and girls. These kids become young adults confused about life. Many times abused .. and mom is oblivious to the abuse. Sex, drugs and being utterly lost about life and God in their mid-teens.. these kids then venture out into life often rushing into the riskiest lifestyles .. and this is when mom adopts that moniker "not my son" and "I have to let him be who he wants to be" yet deep inside saying "if I tell him no, I am gonna loose him" ..only making the situation worse. Take all of this and then allowing a young man like this to go to a foreign country ..and you have the story of Aeryn Gillern.
His disappearance is "the end" result of a lost soul. One look at the guy and you see a smiling face, but underneath it all a young man crying out for understanding in a lost/confused life. -
rpullman-117 January 2021We bailed early on so some of this is from reading other reviews. It is a tragic story, the loss of a child in a foreign country, body never found, almost certainly murdered. But this film does more to confuse than to clarify. It is little more than interviews of the mother, close up in a studio. She recounts an ordeal of hostile treatment by the Vienna police and their refusal to investigate, which might have been the case but she comes across as a Karen. From what we could tell there was no report of a crime scene to the police, nor witnesses on record, so what are the police to do a week after her son's disappearance other than to treat it as a missing person. Supposedly he was at a very upscale gay bathhouse, was seen by one couple running from it naked, and seen by a fisherman in the Danube Canal. It would make sense for the film to drill down into those leads, talk to the couple and the fisherman, interview people who were at the bathhouse. It would make sense to solicit interviews from anyone else who might have witnessed a bathhouse altercation, a naked man in the street, or a man drowning in the canal. Not to mention coworkers at UNIDO (how did he get the job?), friends, lovers, etc. None of that apparently. Just Mom, on camera, making allegations.
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labng13 June 2021The constant tears from the mother served as a horrible distraction from what I believe was the purpose. This poor mother was slighted and misrepresented. Producers and directors owe her an apology. I found this completely unacceptable. Shame on you.