‘Our Time Will Come’ review: Sarajevo documentary winner is study of interracial love in Vienna

Dir: Ivette Löcker. Austria. 2025. 105mins.

Residing between two worlds additionally means assembly each other midway in Austrian filmmaker Ivette Löcker’s newest documentary. Taking a measured method, Löcker follows the interracial relationship between Gambian man Siaka Touray and his Austrian spouse Victoria Preuer over the course of a couple of 12 months, as they forge their lives collectively in Vienna. The taking pictures model additionally provides a partnership – between observational moments from their day by day interactions and extra formal interviews, through which they categorical their emotions on to the digicam, each individually and collectively.

Löcker provides the couple house to articulate the variations between them

The intimate method in Our Time Will Come is consistent with Löcker’s earlier documentaries, together with If It Blinds, Open Your Eyes (2014) and Ties That Bind (2017). Its low-key nature could also be a little bit understated for some audiences, however the movie’s current win in Sarajevo’s documentary competitors, following its world premiere in Berlin’s Discussion board part earlier this 12 months, ought to assist it appeal to additional consideration on the competition circuit and on residence turf.

The connection between Victoria and Siaka has been marked by precariousness since they first bought collectively, when his residency standing was unsure. Along with the bureaucratic hurdles, Siaka provides first-person testimony in regards to the “illness” of racism. Victoria and Siaka’s households welcome them with open arms, however it’s notable how open-hearted Siaka’s group is to Victoria when the couple journey to Gambia – a marked distinction to Siaka’s encounters in white-dominated Vienna. He recollects being set upon there by two males in a racially motivated assault, including that the police who arrived then handled him just like the legal. “It’s like each Black man in Europe is an animal,” he says.

The concern they skilled over the uncertainty surrounding Siaka’s settled standing is introduced into focus because the pair sit collectively whereas Victoria reads diary entries from the interval earlier than he acquired all his papers. “I wished my regular life again,” she says, later including, “Truly, I by no means wished a standard life” – opposing sentiments that encapsulate the tensions surrounding the traditional existence the couple are striving for.

Löcker’s movie is uncommon in that it focuses on this building of a ‘regular’ life slightly than the kind of apparent dramatic arc sought by many documentarians. Whereas there are nonetheless challenges, not least when it comes to Siaka’s employment, the pair are navigating lots of the ins and outs of recent life that any couple faces – cooking collectively, serving to to clear a shared backyard house, figuring out the place to hold footage, planning to begin a household.

Löcker provides the couple house to articulate the variations between them, when it comes to character traits, cultural experiences and expectations. Even the documentary itself is interrogated throughout one prolonged interview, when Victoria says she is anxious there may be not sufficient pleasure within the movie, whereas Siaka argues in regards to the significance of expressing the ache that has been skilled for others to see. Löcker doesn’t conceal the actual fact she steps in right here, nearly within the position of mediator.

It’s placing that Victoria and Siaka are open about expressing their completely different attitudes to life. Generally the couple aren’t afraid to speak their views to 1 one other however they’re at all times searching for impartial floor, even when it comes to the language they use, with each talking English – a second tongue for every of them. Löcker’s quiet and unassuming method permits the documentarian to indicate the hole between Victoria and Siaka is much less necessary than the bridges they’re decided to construct throughout it.