THE STORY – Bobby is constantly in his car, driving back and forth on the autobahn linking Vienna and Salzburg. Other people travel the same route. Bobby picks them up to help with the petrol money and talks to them along the way: the soldier questioning what it means to fight; the supermarket trainee going to visit family; the academic researching the road’s history; the queer woman about to get married. Many different paths, different accents and different stories, most of them true. Bobby listens, but also talks about himself, about his youth, about aging, about his friend in a coma in Salzburg who is the reason for all his trips.
THE CAST – Bobby Sommer
THE TEAM – Sebastian Brameshuber (Director/Writer) & Anna Lehner (Screenplay)
THE RUNNING TIME – 122 Minutes
There is an old cinephile saying that movies should take us on a journey. With “London,” Austrian filmmaker Sebastian Brameshuber takes that idea almost too literally. Set almost entirely inside a moving car on the Westautobahn between Vienna and Salzburg, the film unfolds as a series of ride sharing encounters that blur the line between documentary and fiction. It’s a conceptually elegant premise and, in stretches, a quietly affecting one. But expanded to feature length, “London” ultimately plays more like a prolonged exercise than a fully realized cinematic experience.
Bobby, played by Bobby Sommer, is 72 and constantly in motion. He regularly commutes along the highway to visit his former friend Arthur, who lies in a Salzburg hospital in a coma. To save on fuel costs, Bobby offers his trips as ride sharing journeys, picking up younger passengers heading in the same direction. They bring with them anecdotes and passing thoughts, fragments that loosely tether back to lives unfolding somewhere beyond the road. Bobby listens attentively, occasionally speaking about his own youth, the process of aging, and his complicated bond with Arthur, a man who remains an unresolved presence even in absence.
The car becomes a liminal space, defined more by transit than destination. Outside the windows, forests and mountains slide past, punctuated by junctions, barriers, and bridges. Light shifts with the seasons, subtly altering the texture of the journey. Brameshuber films the Autobahn not as mere infrastructure but as a living archive, a ribbon of history where the private and the political quietly coexist. The A1 begins to resemble a river, accumulating stories like sediment as it flows forward.
Formally, “London” exists somewhere between staged fiction and documentary observation. The conversations are unscripted, and many of the passengers appear as versions of themselves rather than as constructed characters. This lends the film a sense of immediacy and authenticity, but it also introduces a looseness that becomes increasingly apparent. Most of the people Bobby picks up register less as fully drawn individuals than as fleeting impressions. We learn little beyond the outlines of their immediate concerns, and many exchanges drift along pleasantly without deepening into something more revealing.
This is largely by design. Brameshuber is interested in encounters rather than arcs, in fleeting intimacy rather than transformation. At its best, “London” captures the fragile warmth that can emerge between strangers sharing confined space and unstructured time. There’s something quietly political in this gesture, a belief that even in uncertain times, anonymity and kindness can still exist side by side. Yet the film’s commitment to this minimalism also limits its reach. With little variation in structure and an almost exclusive reliance on dialogue, the pacing grows lethargic. What might have worked beautifully as a short film or mid length essay piece begins to drag as conversations accumulate without progression.
Bobby Sommer remains the film’s most compelling asset. A former musician and longtime fixture in Vienna’s cultural scene, Sommer brings a natural rhythm to the role, aided by his sonorous voice and relaxed presence. He feels less like a performer than a conduit, someone through whom these brief stories pass. Still, the film’s decision to position Bobby primarily as an observer means that even his own narrative, including the hospitalized friend who motivates his travels, remains frustratingly underdeveloped.
Working in the same vein as other conversation driven films set in spaces of transit, “London” favors mood and proximity over momentum. Where those films often allow dialogue to push toward emotional or philosophical movement, Brameshuber’s film is content to hover. It circles its ideas without pressing them, allowing moments to exist without demanding they accumulate meaning. This restraint will appeal to viewers attuned to slow cinema and hybrid forms, but others may find the film overly slight.
Premiering in the Panorama section of the Berlinale, it aligns neatly with that program’s interest in formally adventurous and quietly political work. Brameshuber’s sensitivity to everyday textures is evident, and his intentions are sincere. Yet intention alone does not always translate into engagement. For all its humane impulses and moments of understated beauty, “London” struggles to justify its duration, mistaking time spent for depth achieved.
There’s value here, particularly in the film’s insistence that listening still matters and that brief encounters can carry meaning even when they lead nowhere. But as a feature, “London” remains an intriguing detour rather than a destination.
