Vassilis Kroustallis reviews the 2026 Berlinale Competition film 'The Loneliest Man in Town'.
Are blues people solitary people? This is up for grabs, yet Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel's elegantly humane docu-fiction film, 'The Loneliest Man in Town', presents more than a blues man in crisis: it presents a whole culture.
Austrian blues musician Al Cook (born 1945 as Alois Koch) lends his status and analog music culture to a film that, as time goes by, grows less lonely by the minute. Arguably, the loneliest thing is the opening shot, with Cook in his basement getting the Xmas tree for the lonely celebration, along with candles and blues records. Suddenly, the lights go out; he soon learns this is only the first step in a forced eviction process. A big holding company has bought the whole building to demolish it and build new blocks instead. Every tenant but Al Cook has signed to leave their apartment; he's the last one to be coerced. And as the city officials tell him (in very graphic terms), there are more ways than one to get things done.
Al Cook will experience this first-hand when (in one of the film's finest comic gangster deals) he's visited by a company's representative who will intimidate him in every possible way. Yet the narrative abruptly slides after the first act; the film will not present the post-capitalist housing problem. It's just that Al Cook's house is really something different.
Al Cook has Elvis Presley as an idol (but never went to the United States), and his home is a living museum of memorabilia. We walk through the film in static shots, as if time had stood still since the grand blues era of the beginning of the 20th century (which Al Cook never lived). Here's more than nostalgia, but a fan culture implemented in an Austrian apartment. Al Cook has lived his whole life invoking a cultural affinity with a distant musical past; now this past (his apartment's memories, like vinyl, videocassettes, and other insignia) is progressively taken away.
In a reversal of tone, the film becomes lighter as Al Cook's situation worsens. His resistance plan having backfired, an old flame will offer some needed comfort, and the dream of going to America will suddenly resound. 'The Loneliest Man in Town' is short on big arguments and adopts a light-hearted, almost analogue approach to filmmaking, devoid of forced editing transitions and letting its characters breathe.
The film's singing (mostly by Al Cook) is carefully integrated into the narrative; it is not a 'concert' film (in any case, Al Cook plays only in small venues). But it still misses some points of having an autodidact on screen and letting him play only as much as the narrative built around him permits.
Vassilis Kroustallis
'The Loneliest Man in Town' screened (World Premiere) at the 76th Berlin Film Festival.
