Solvent (2024) 

A researcher and his team go to his grand-father’s house to try and unearth Nazi documents for the sake of history. Once on location, things take a turn for the odd and unusual. 

Written by Johannes Grenzfurthner and Benjamin Roberts and directed by Grenzfurthner, this film starts off as a found footage (thankfully with stable camera work) which eventually turns into something more experimental and all of over the place. The thing here is that “all over the place” is not a bad thing in this story. The filming style for this film becomes a part of the story as it often does in found footage films, giving the film a very particular mood while allowing for things to get odd, weird, and all over the place all in the right ways. The writing here is interesting with characters that work out pretty well as single beings and with each other, a storyline that goes from “oh, yeah, that makes sense” to “what am I even watching” in no time at all. The direction here is close knit with the writing, giving the film a cohesive film out of something that may seem un-cohesive at first.  

The cast here does rather well and not recognizing the faces (too much) helps in the immersion for the viewer and it helps bring the story into believability as a found footage film. The leads here are Jon Gries, Aleksandra Cwen, and Grenzfurthner. The central cast here is entertaining to watch and gives performances that sell the idea of the film, the story, and the found footage aspect. The supporting cast here is a bit of a modge podge of actors, directors, writers, and other industry people all coming together to create the weirdest, oddest, most random ensemble cast a film could ask for.  

The cinematography by Florian Hofer (and team) works well here and shifts depending on what the story needs, leading into the last third of the film where it seems like it’s more random images than planned out film. However, this is how the filmmaker wants it to look and, knowing this, it quickly becomes clear that it was all carefully planned, carefully crafted, and carefully executed. This is Johannes Grenzfurthner film, so experiemental visuals and sounds are part of the package, a package that works quite well here. A mention of the editing by Anton Paievski is important here as it brings all this footage together and creates a film that makes sense and one that is easily watchable while remaining as experimental as it can be.

Solvent is a film that will definitely not be for everyone and it comes with a trigger warning for flashing lights/images, but if this is no problem, it’s an interesting watch and one that is entertaining from start to really weird finish. The film here shows an understanding of filmmaking and art that is deep enough to allow the filmmaker to break the rules and make his own rules to create films that are a sort of calculated assault on the sense.