Never Come Back (2023) on Netflix

Our mysterious protagonist tentatively plays a familiar melody. It's a song known to many of us, recognisable from dance floors across Europe - but how many of us have ever bothered to listen to its remarkably imperialistic lyrics?

Museum depots are places where things are kept out of sight, but also protected from all-too-schematic historical judgments. In Never Come Back Gruber continues his ongoing investigation of the backstage areas of art institutions to engage with Neue Galerie Graz's holdings. In the cage-like space of the repository, we see a naked musician working intensely on a composition. He is inspired by artists who belong to a gray area between modernist aspirations and enthusiasm for Nazism, and whose works combine a taste for the exotic with local patriotism, religious fervor, and eroticism. Our mysterious protagonist tentatively plays a familiar melody. It's a song known to many of us, recognisable from dance floors across Europe - but how many of us have ever bothered to listen to its remarkably imperialistic lyrics?