Totem has secured international sales rights for “Oasis,” a feature film by writer-director Jannis Lenz. The acquisition marks an expansion of Totem’s involvement in the project as the company continues a strategic shift toward production operations. The film is scheduled to premiere in the Horizons competition section at the Venice Film Festival.
The narrative follows developments at a school where a video of a student threatening classmates circulates online, prompting an escalation of tensions. Three marginalized students flee to a nearby forest to escape pressure from authority figures and peers. Their retreat becomes a space where recreational activities transform into ritualistic behavior and pain functions as a coping mechanism, with existing conflicts eventually forcing a reassessment of their relationships.
Markus Katsch, producer at Zeitgeist, characterized the film as a precise examination of adolescent vulnerability that addresses themes of social exclusion and aggression from a humanistic standpoint. Bérénice Vincent, Totem’s CEO, praised director Lenz’s technical skill and noted that the film interrogates contradictions in how violence is treated differently depending on context, reflecting real-world patterns.
Lenz is a Vienna Film Academy graduate who studied under Jessica Hausner and apprenticed with Michael Haneke, in addition to participating in the Berlinale Talents program. His earlier work includes the 2017 short “Wannabe,” which received the Prix Clermont-Ferrand and a European Film Award nomination, and the 2021 graduation film “Soldat Ahmet,” which premiered at Visions du Réel and won multiple international honors.
The cast includes Florian Geißelmann and Godehard Giese alongside emerging performers Anton Petzold and Mathilda Smith. Production companies involved include Zeitgeist Filmproduktion FFM, Wega Film, and Third Picture, with support from multiple German and Austrian cultural and film funding organizations.
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