Brothers of the Night

One captain, one boat, two boatmen, the Danube, Vienna’s skyline in the background... Whether it’s reality or fiction isn’t important. The protagonists in Brothers of the Night do exist in real life: They’re Bulgarian Roma. Sometimes they’re like tiger cubs, at other times they’re the gay sailors from Fassbinder’s ‘Querelle’ or Marlon Brando’s grandchildren, wearing their leather jackets like suits of armour. Poverty and a sense of adventure has brought them to Vienna. They sell their bodies because they don’t want to beg for money or peddle newspapers. Their customers are lonely, usually older men who live in public housing. The guys do ‘business’ with them, a word they choose to make a clear distinction between work and pleasure. It’s a made-up world within the real one, and it’s temporary. The Bulgarians have replaced the Romanians, who moved on to Italy. Truth and lies! Sobriety and drunkenness! A life lived between the two worlds. In Bulgaria, they get married at 16 and have children six months later. Their families need the money. They have to get away. And then they get to the blue and pink nightlife of the gay bar Café Rüdiger, the macho talk and fantasies of making big money that materializes into flashy belt buckles and crappy black cars. They boast and lie all the time. Anything’s possible at night. Between brothers.