Trophy Hunter: Ulrich Seidl’s Portraits and Safari

The Austrian director Ulrich Seidl often films interview subjects as though they were posing for portrait photographs, and Seidl maintains that one of his major influences is the photographer Diane Arbus. This article examines how this high level of control over a film’s frames reveals strategies central to his filmmaking and especially to his documentary films. Seidl is particularly concerned with depicting his subjects’ complicity in the exploitation of labor, as seen in Safari (2016), a film about Austrians who travel to Namibia to hunt and collect trophies. Seidl presents viewers with unforgiving portraits of Austrian tourists, as he employs nearly every one of his trademark techniques to highlight the many contradictions behind his subjects’ perspectives.