‘Out of Sight’ review – An idyllic mountain in the Austrian highlands is a gilded cage for distressed asylum seekers | film

toLocated in the Austrian state of Tyrol, Bürglkopf is an idyllic alpine landscape, with its green fields and scenic trails. This peaceful place is a popular holiday spot, visited by thousands of tourists every year. However, some visitors are less welcoming than others. Nestled among the dense forests on the top of the mountain is the so-called deportation camp, where asylum seekers are detained for months, even years. In Lisa Polster’s poignant documentary, one of our first glimpses of the facility and its surroundings is through the window of a moving car. The coherent shot indicates the secrecy surrounding this place, which its residents describe as a prison rather than an asylum.

Through interviews with current residents, Bolster’s film weaves a sobering tapestry of experiences—despite the center’s resistance to the documentary project. Many asylum seekers speak of poor living conditions, lack of access to legal support, and the impossibility of social integration due to the camp’s remote location. The legal impasse they are experiencing, resulting from excessive delays in processing applications, leads to further psychological distress. In one heartbreaking scene, one of the detainees looks sadly at the herds of livestock grazing nearby, envying their freedom of movement. With strict curfew hours and few recreational activities available, time at Burgelkopf camp seems to stretch on endlessly.

While most of the film’s events are played out in a straightforward manner, there is a gentleness to the way the detainees are portrayed. These young people are constantly demonized by far-right media, but in Bolster’s film they are depicted as minor figures against the vastness of the landscape. To steal these men’s time, the only valuable currency they can call their own, is to deny them any kind of future at all.

Out of Sight is showing on True Story from July 24th.