Voodoo Jürgens was honored for his first leading role in the film “Rickerl.”

“The idea was not to switch to acting, but to move to new ways with the voodoo thing,” Voodoo Jürgens, known as David Ollerer, told the Klein Zeitung newspaper before the film's cinema release. He can now change his mind. Because the musician turned his first leading role in cinema into an award. Yesterday evening, the 40-year-old actor received the Diagonale Award for Acting in Graz. “In a remarkable ensemble, Voodoo Jürgens unfolds layer after layer in actor David Öllerer, who brings Rickerl's story from the outskirts of Vienna to the big screen with sensitivity and admiration, with his respectful and passionate interaction with all the characters, from great to great. The acting jury said, explaining their choice: “Little one, it allows Rikerl to fight for his long-lost life and creates an irresistible strength and closeness.”

It's an award for a very personal film that also borrows from the singer's biography. Because the character of Erich “Rickerl” Bohacek is based on Voodoo Jürgens' hit song “Gitti”. In it, the Viennese song master sings: “And now let us stare at me, for the Rickerl will soon be calling.”

Nearly 56,000 people in this country have seen Adrian Goeginger's third feature film in cinemas so far. It is an ode to Vienna, Churchill, and subculture. Voodoo Jürgens plays a struggling bar musician, a historical figure, and a dreamer who lives his day with his guitar. When he is fired from his job as a gravedigger, he has to return to AMS. At the same time, he wants to take care of his young son. The main details of this biopic come from the lead actor, who himself rose from graveyard hacker to astropop star. late. “For me, it got to a point when I was 32 or 33, when I was actually quite vulnerable already. I said to myself: How am I going to keep doing this?” And fortunately he did. Subtle and vulnerable, the musician creates a believable character in the film. He who represses loses himself, picks himself up and finds himself again. He also hired most of the musicians in the film, rearranged the songs and showed the director bars far from a Vienna postcard.

In Diagonale, you can also see the independent lover on the big screen in “Animal”: in director Sofia Exarcho’s reflexive drama about the lives of animators and amateurs and the absurdity of mass tourism, he embodies the tourist in the guise of a guest; Very revealing. The Tulln native's next project is a new album.