In the final part of my interview with Johannes Grenzfurthner, we discuss his new film, Solvent, in more depth.

B & S About Movies: What else shaped Solvent from your own life?

Johannes Grenzfurthner: There are moments in the film that are direct quotes or anecdotes from my life. For example, the story about my grandmother is true. I went to see E.T. with her, and she was so overwhelmed.

(Editor’s note: In the film, the character Bartholdi recalls seeing E.T. with his grandmother. Flabbergasted by the movie, she tries to make sense of it, saying: “Spielberg. Hmmm. A Jew.”)

She wasn’t anti-Semitic in the way we typically think of it—she hated Hitler, often cursed him because her brother died in the war, and she never forgave him for that. But she was born in 1923 and grew up in an era saturated with Nazi propaganda. Like most kids at the time, she was part of the Nazi youth organizations—it was mandatory. While she never openly spoke badly about Jewish people or subscribed to Nazi ideology, there was still a residue of that indoctrination in her thinking. When we saw E.T. back in 1982, she was genuinely fascinated but completely baffled. It was probably the first science fiction movie she’d ever seen in a cinema. She had grown up on films from the ’40s and ’50s that aired on Austrian television—none of them were anything like E.T., she tried to make sense of it, and her explanation was, “Spielberg… he’s Jewish. Maybe that’s why it’s so strange.”

It’s such a weird anecdote, but I felt it perfectly captured the ambivalence of that generation’s thinking. Even when they weren’t openly hateful, there was still this ingrained framework of “otherness” and attempts to rationalize anything unfamiliar through those old, biased lenses.

I included it in the film because it reflects something larger: the lingering traces of ideology, the subtle ways it persists. Especially now—with Austria’s far-right gaining traction again, and looking at things like Trump’s election—it feels like history is echoing back to us. We’re literally in the 2020s, but it feels disturbingly like the 1920s all over again.

B&S: My dad was an art teacher. Kids in class would make pottery of swastikas. They didn’t know what it meant they were being rebellious. And my father would make a point to break every single one of them. He told me you can’t ever let that happen again.

He had a stroke and one of the hardest things to deal with was his memory loss, explaining where America was heading every day. He learned about January 6th and the riots months after it happened; it broke his dementia for a bit. I had to explain to him several times how we got here. And I always thought, “What was it like to be in Nazi Germany as things slowly progressed?” I worry that I know now.

With your different background and learning about it in school, what do you think? How could we be doing this all over again?

Johannes: There are so many ways to look at it, but I think, fundamentally, it always comes down to economics. People are afraid. They can’t afford things. And fear—especially economic fear—makes them vulnerable to manipulation.

I’ve heard people mocking voters, saying things like, “Oh, you’re choosing your candidate because of the price of eggs?” But for some people, the price of eggs is survival. That kind of mockery is incredibly classist. If you’re struggling to put food on the table, fascism feels like an abstract concept—it’s not what you’re thinking about when you’re hungry or when your family’s future is uncertain.

In German, we have a saying: “First you think about what you’re eating, then you think about morality.” And it rings true. For many people, politics boils down to economics. Take rural areas, or places devastated by mill closures or other industries disappearing. When people are desperate, they’ll vote for whoever promises relief, no matter the long-term consequences.

It was the same in the 1920s. The economy was in shambles, and people were suffering. They voted for the person who promised them bread, not realizing that meant voting for the person who would later send them off to war. That next step—what fascism truly entails—is something most people don’t think about when their immediate needs are so overwhelming.

That’s why, at my core, I’m such a neo-Marxist. If you don’t take the economic realities of people seriously, you’ve already lost the fight. The root of so much political instability, and even fascism, is tied to economics. Addressing that fear is the only way to truly counteract it.

B&S: As you said, I live in the Rust Belt, and we’ve barely recovered from the 1980s steel mill closures. But if somebody with power says I’m going to bring steel and coal back, you will vote for that if that’s your dream. But if you know the industry, you know that the heyday of steel and coal in Western Pennsylvania can’t come back. It’s a different world. So you set up people to vote for you because of a promise you can’t deliver, and when these disenfranchised people are energized and disenfranchised again, what happens?

Johannes: Yes! I even have a Pittsburgh story about Solvent. So, I came across this review on Letterboxd from a user called Porridge MD. It stuck with me because of how the movie resonated with him and what he decided to do afterward. He starts by describing this little dive bar where he likes to hang out—classic working-class vibe. You shoot some pool, have a drink, chat with the regulars. Among the crowd, there’s this one guy, a skinhead type with Nordic runes tattooed on his arm. And, you know, it’s clear what kind of ideology he subscribes to. Most of the time, this guy talks about football or whatever, but every so often, he starts spouting Holocaust denial nonsense—stuff like “the gas chambers never existed.” Porridge MD said he usually ignored the guy because… well, America, right? Bars like that sometimes let people like him stick around. But after watching Solvent, something changed. The next time he saw the guy, he walked right up to him and said, “The biggest traitor is the Holocaust denier. He insults the cunning of the German people.” That’s a quote by the Nazi character in my film. And apparently, the guy’s face just crumpled. Like he’d been hit by a bazooka. Porridge MD gave the film five stars, saying, “Cheers to you!” That’s the kind of thing that gives you goosebumps as a filmmaker. The idea that something you created can spark that kind of subversive reaction in someone—that’s just lovely.

B&S: Back to movies, we’re not getting the end of the world we wanted.

Johannes: A few years ago, I made a documentary called Traceroute. You can find it on Vimeo-On-Demand. It’s essentially a political nerd road trip—I traveled from the West Coast to the East Coast of the U.S., visiting locations and meeting people who influenced me as a nerd. One of the stops was the Monroeville Mall in Pittsburgh, famous because of Dawn of the Dead.

I even did an interview with a researcher in the parking lot there until security kicked us out. That was an experience. (laughs)

In the film, I talked about this idea that people are obsessed with end-of-the-world scenarios. Zombies, nukes, alien invasions—we love these big, dramatic collapses. But the truth is, the world doesn’t really end. It just keeps getting worse, incrementally, bit by bit. We’re like the proverbial frog in the pot, with the water heating up slowly.

I think people are waiting for this defining moment, this boom, where everything collapses in one go. But that’s not how it works. Instead, we’re already living through constant, rolling apocalypses. Look at 9/11. Symbolically, for many Americans, that was the end-of-the-world moment. It doesn’t get more hardcore than that, at least in a symbolic sense.

What’s the next step? A city being nuked? Sure, that’s possible. But honestly, the way things unfold is rarely as cinematic as we’d like to imagine. It’s more subtle, more pervasive. The real apocalypse is just this endless decline—the systems we rely on slowly breaking down, society eroding, while we all hope for a clear moment of resolution that will never come.

B&S: What movies influenced your nerd life?

Johannes: After making Masking Threshold, I was invited by Letterboxd to create a list of films that influenced me. I welcomed the challenge. I am a nerd for “lists.” But when I sat down, it was pretty overwhelming. Every movie I’ve ever watched has shaped how I view film and the world. Some films are, for various reasons, enormously present in my memory. Poltergeist, for example, because I first saw it when I was 9, alone on late-night television in our dark living room while my parents and friends had a BBQ outside. I felt I was dying of fear throughout the entire experience. Or RoboCop, because as a 12-year-old nerd in a shabby theater in my Austrian hometown, it kindled my interest in politics, technology and toxic waste that melts your face off. I didn’t include those films (and moments) in my compilation because they feel too big and too dominating. Instead, I chose films that, for whatever biochemical reason, my brain goes back to when it is wandering, digesting and scheming.

(Editor’s note: Check out Johannes’ list here).

Thanks to Johannes for spending so much time discussing his films with me. I can’t wait to see what he makes next. Please take the time to experience his work; it’s quite amazing.

You can watch the film Masking Threshold on Tubi.

Razzennest is available on Fandango and Plex for free in the U.S.

Solvent is currently playing festivals.

You can learn more about Johannes and his work at monochrom.

In the next part of this wide-ranging discussion, Johannes discusses his new film Solvent and how it was made. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, there are some major spoilers regarding its ending.

B&S About Movies: What I’ve enjoyed about your films is their density. They create their own universes and logic. Throughout the three films, you’ve ramped up the intensity by the time Solvent arrives.

Johannes Grenzfurthner: Yes, by the end of Solvent, it really becomes something else—even compared to the craziness and bizarreness of the previous two films. Solvent ultimately creates its own messed-up reality. A critic friend of mine had an interesting reaction: he could only watch the first half-hour in one sitting because some unforeseen work came up. He told me later he almost felt disappointed by how “normal” the beginning seemed. It feels like a very classic found footage film at first, with the helmet camera and the search for stuff. I told him, “Come on, watch the rest of it!” When he finally did, he said, “It totally lived up to what I was hoping for by the end. I can never look at my penis the same way!”

B&S: What was it like to watch with Jon Gries on Solvent? He’s not a big star to the rest of the world, but to me he is.

Johannes: Jon Gries is such a veteran—he’s been acting for 50 years and has been in everything! When we started casting, it was fun because we only needed someone for one day of voice recording for the main character. Since the talent wouldn’t have to come to Austria for weeks, we could afford a more prominent name. We reached out to a lot of actors—it could have been someone else in the end. But thanks to Tom Gorai and Tim League, we connected with Jon Gries.

When we started working with him, I was so glad it worked out the way it did. Looking back, I can’t imagine anyone else in that role. Jon was perfect—his voice, the brittleness in how he talks, everything about it felt right. Watching the film now, hearing his voice, it’s like the perfect storm. Funny enough, I didn’t even realize at first that Jon was Uncle Rico! (laughs)

The crazy part is that Jon was in Thailand when we recorded. I was sitting in my little office in Vienna, directing him remotely while he was in a sound booth in Thailand. Because of the time difference, I got up at 2 a.m. to work with him. It was incredibly hot in the sound booth, and Jon was sweating so much. Because we recorded chronologically, you can hear him getting more and more exhausted as the film progresses.

It ended up being perfect, though. He had to repeat lines, focus, and deal with the heat, and by the end, he was sweating like a pig. Jon even joked that it was almost like method acting—melting away just like the character. We both laughed because, in the end, it felt so right for the role. (laughs)

B&S: I love the end of it! I love how it looks!

Johannes: Thanks! But some guy in a review didn’t. Honestly, I was a little offended by that. He said the melting at the end looked “so CGI.” And I was like, what the fuck? It’s not CGI! We worked for three days in a studio to make that effect. It’s actual wax—our special effects guy created a wax puppet, like in Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark.

We melted it with industrial-strength hair dryers, filmed it, and sped it up. It’s such a hands-on, old-school effect. There was so much melted wax on the ground by the end that it almost caught fire! The industrial dryer made it incredibly hot, and there was liquid wax everywhere. At one point, we thought we might burn down the poor special effects guy’s studio. (laughs)

B&S: That’s why I like practical effects; at one point, this effect existed.

Johannes: Exactly. And then, after the shot, you look around the room, and it’s filled with debris. You’ve created something, but now you have to clean it up. You have to deal with it. After you’ve nailed the perfect shot, your next thought is, “What now?” Oh no. (laughs)

Nobody gets into filmmaking to stand around in a green room with dots on your face. Nobody wants that, honestly. But from a production standpoint, I get it. I mean, Marvel couldn’t pump out their movies so quickly if they didn’t rely on CGI and post-production. It makes everything cheaper because it’s more feasible than doing it all practically.

We’ll see where AI takes us in the coming years, but there’s something special about being on set, knowing this is the one moment in time where we can do this. It’s like I’m channeling my inner Whitney Houston. If we mess up the take, that’s it. I love that. There’s something tremendously energizing about a whole team of people focused on that moment in time.

There’s an entire crew—special effects, camera, lighting, everyone—all focused on making those 20 seconds, that one minute, perfect. That’s why I’ll never give up on making films in the real world, in reality. It’s just the best.

B&S: Where did Solvent come from?

Johannes: The idea for Solvent came from this moment when I stepped into my grandfather’s old farmhouse after not having been there for ten years. There had been a rift in our family—my mother and her sister didn’t speak for a decade, partly due to inheritance disputes and family drama. When my aunt passed away, her daughter came back to Austria for the first time in twenty years, and we went to see what she inherited. It felt a lot like the story of Solvent.

When I stepped into that house, I could feel the mold attacking my lungs—it was horrendous. The smell was unbearable, and everything was decaying. But I spent some of my best childhood days there, so walking into that house again, seeing what my aunt had or hadn’t done with it, hit me hard. I saw it through this nostalgic lens—how it used to look in my childhood, compared to how it was now, in ruins. Something in my brain shifted, and I thought, I need to do something with this. It felt like the perfect setting for a horror story.

I’ve always been fascinated by Austrian history, and the movie was born out of a need to confront Austria’s historical baggage—not in a traditional or sanitized way. The farmhouse, tied to my family’s history, became a metaphor for exploring guilt, complicity, and how the past still seeps into the present. Austria has this unique way of dealing with its Nazi past. When I was in school in the 1980s, we didn’t learn a lot about the Nazi era. The German school curriculum, by contrast, was much more proactive about it. But in Austria, it was as if the country didn’t exist between 1938 and 1945. Austrians were very eager to forget, despite the fact that most of the concentration camps were run by Austrians.

Austria was never good at confronting the past, and I saw this gap in my conversations with friends, their parents, and grandparents. It was as if Austria had this hole in its soul, this thing that no one wanted to talk about. The more time passes, the more people forget. And that’s the core of the film—there’s something in the ground in Austria that never goes away, something that still affects us. It doesn’t matter if you talk about it or not—it will catch up with you. It’s very Freudian, embedded into everything, this festering wound that never heals.

In the final part of this interview, we’ll get into the concepts of Solvent, inspirations and Johannes’ favorite films.

In the next part of my discussion with director Johannes Grenzfurthner, we discuss his film Razzennest and many, many other ideas.

B & S About Movies: I watch a lot of commentary tracks, and bringing the commentary track forward like you did in Razzennest was such an interesting way to tell the movie’s story.

Johannes Grenzfurthner: The idea for Razzennest came to me in the shower—which is unusual for me because I’m not one of those people who typically gets inspired in the shower. But this time, I did. At the time, I was thinking about several different ideas, and a couple of them started to merge into what would eventually become Razzennest.

I’ve always wanted to make a film about the Thirty Years’ War. It was such a pivotal yet horrifying event in European history, and it reshaped the world in profound ways. The war’s sheer brutality forced Europe’s powers to rethink how they interacted, leading to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and the modern ideas of nation-states, borders, and diplomacy. But despite its significance, it’s rarely talked about today.

That said, I can’t exactly afford to make a grand historical epic about the Thirty Years’ War. So I asked myself: How can I distill the essence of this topic into a film that’s feasible to produce? That’s when I came up with the idea of the commentary track as the narrative engine—a way for the plot to unfold through audio rather than traditional visuals.

At the same time, I was reflecting on a specific type of arthouse documentary filmmaking. For example, Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Homo Sapiens—a 2016 documentary where the entire film consists of static shots of desolate places, like abandoned suburbs in Fukushima or decaying shopping malls in Detroit. There’s no narration, no people, no action—just 100 minutes of atmospheric imagery. It’s like a coffee-table book of disaster zones.

I found the film both frustrating and oddly fascinating. On the one hand, it’s audacious in its minimalism and breaks traditional storytelling rules—something I respect. On the other hand, it left me thinking, “What even is this? Is it a movie?” That tension stuck with me.

So I thought: What if I applied that style to a fictitious film? Imagine an arthouse documentary filled with decaying landscapes, old farm equipment, creepy things crawling on trees—all presented with that stark, detached aesthetic. And over that, you hear a commentary track about the Thirty Years’ War, even though the war itself is never depicted visually. That satirical juxtaposition—of historical chaos with visual stillness—became the foundation for Razzennest.

In the end, the film is a collision of these different ideas: my fascination with the Thirty Years’ War, my critique of certain arthouse tendencies, and the creative challenge of telling a story in an unconventional way.

B&S: I think about it every time I record a commentary track.

Johannes: The process was fascinating. In the story, they begin by recording a straightforward commentary track. But as the narrative unfolds, it shifts—ghosts attack or materialize, and the session transforms into an audio horror experience. For me, crafting this felt much closer to creating an audio play than making a traditional film. We did multiple takes, leaving space for improvisation, which gave the project a dynamic, experimental energy.

Audio plays operate with a different set of rules for depicting reality, and that’s something I leaned into. For example, I enjoy found footage films, and to some extent, all my movies borrow from that genre. But found footage has this almost obsessive fixation on realism—often to its detriment. Take the way characters in found footage films handle cameras: they shake them violently, supposedly to make things look more “authentic.” Yet in real life, even if someone were fleeing from a monster, they wouldn’t be that erratic with their filming. People know how to hold their phones or cameras, and modern devices even have built-in stabilizers to smooth things out.

It’s ironic: found footage films try so hard to mimic realism that they end up undermining it. They create a version of realism that feels forced and artificial. That’s where I deviate. For me, realism isn’t the goal. It’s about creating a compelling experience, even if that means breaking away from those so-called “rules” of realism.

B&S: Totally – it’s almost like they’ve built their own visual language within the genre.

Johannes: Exactly. But at the same time, they’re so obsessed with this idea of realism—except it’s not realism at all. For example, I’ve had people say, “The voice acting isn’t realistic; this is a found footage film, so it should sound like a real audio commentary track.” And when I ask them, “What do you mean by that? What kind of realism are you looking for?” they can never articulate it.

For me, this is a classic issue, especially in the horror genre. Fans often have very rigid ideas of how things should look or sound. If something deviates even slightly from their expectations, they become skeptical. Horror fans can be incredibly conservative about how stories are presented.

You see this with the reactions to the recent Halloween films. They’re solid movies that try to do something different, but fans hate them because they’re not the originals or don’t replicate the ’80s vibe. It’s as though fans are chasing a feeling from the past that can’t be recreated. They don’t want something new—they want more of the same.

B&S: People hated the third one at one point.

Johannes: Exactly. The mistake was that they didn’t make the shift earlier. If they had done it with the second film, it would have been clear that Halloween was evolving into a series of standalone, Halloween-themed horror films. But by defining the franchise so firmly around Michael Myers, they locked themselves into that narrative.

B&S: Your movies don’t fit into any easy category. There’s a fine line between arthouse and grindhouse, but if you put a Neon or A24 logo on it…

Johannes: This absolutely gets to the heart of it. Fucking elevated horror. There’s no term I hate more because it’s just pretentious bullshit. Especially in Austria and Germany, where this kind of distinction was ingrained for decades.

In the States, it’s different—you’ve always had a market-driven approach. If it sells, it’s valid. But in Austria and Germany, there was this ridiculous divide, even in music. We had terms like E-Musik (Ernst, or “serious” music) and U-Musik (Unterhaltung, or “entertainment” music). Classical music, opera—those were “serious.” Pop music or anything commercial? Lesser, disposable. The same thing happened with literature. Science fiction, horror, and other genre works were completely dismissed. Even someone like Philip K. Dick didn’t get taken seriously.

And then there’s television. Sure, Austrian public broadcasters did show horror or sci-fi, but it was either cheap Italian stuff they could afford, or it aired very late at night. And when they did show something more significant, it was completely butchered by the German dubbing process. Dubbing often ruined the tone, turning something serious or creepy into unintentional comedy. It was like genre cinema wasn’t even given a fair chance to breathe.

What’s maddening is that we finally started moving past this nonsense. There’s been real, meaningful discussion about the value of science fiction, horror, and genre works. These things are no longer stuck in the cultural ghetto. And sure, 95% of science fiction is crap—but guess what? 95% of everything is crap. It’s about finding the 5% that speaks to you. That’s personal. But the term elevated horror? It drags us right back into that old mindset.

Suddenly, we’re dividing horror into “quality” and “non-quality.” Eggers makes the “good” horror, while everything else is trash? Give me a break. It’s infuriating. Horror doesn’t need a pretentious sublabel to justify its existence. It’s already valid.

B&S: George Romero wasn’t making elevated horror when he started. It was to make money.

Johannes: He’s the patron saint of Pittsburgh, yeah? (laughs)

B&S: I like when art can come out of trying to make money.

Johannes: Of course! Look, we’re living in capitalism. Everyone’s trying to make a living, and Romero wasn’t any different. He didn’t set out to create some highbrow genre redefinition—he made films that could sell. And honestly, that’s one of the reasons his work resonates. It was raw, unfiltered, and tapped directly into the zeitgeist of his time.

Now, take something like A24. It’s also a profit-oriented business. They’ve carved out a niche and a target audience, and they’re incredibly smart about it. They package their films in a way that screams “prestige” or “art,” even when those films are tackling the same themes and ideas as the so-called “lowbrow” stuff. It’s still about making money, but the branding is the trick.

And sure, from a marketing perspective, I get why they lean into terms like “elevated horror.” It’s neat. It’s tidy. It puts things in a drawer so you can say, “This is for the artsy crowd. This isn’t just horror. It’s sophisticated.” But is that helpful? Not really. It creates this artificial divide, suggesting some horror is “better” or “smarter” just because it has a slow pace, a melancholic score, and someone crying in a wide shot.

Night of the Living Dead was a bunch of people making something gritty and intense on a shoestring budget. And yet, it’s one of the most influential films ever made—not just in horror, but in cinema, period. That’s the beauty of genre—it can tackle big, meaningful ideas without putting on a suit and tie and asking for permission to be taken seriously.

The problem with “elevated horror” as a label is that it reinforces these old hierarchies. It tells people, “This is the good kind of horror,” while everything else gets dismissed. It’s the same elitist nonsense we’ve been fighting against for decades in art, music, literature—you name it. Horror doesn’t need elevation. It’s already valid. It doesn’t need permission from the arthouse crowd to matter. It’s a genre that can be as brutal, poetic, or ridiculous as it wants—and that’s exactly what makes it great.

In the next part of this interview, we’ll get into Johannes’ new movie, Solvent.