Movie Review: SOLVENT

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: October 10th, 2025 / 08:31 PM

SOLVENT movie poster | ©2025 Film Movement

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jon Gries, Aleksandra Cwen, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Roland Gratzner, Jasmin Hagendorfer, Ronald von der Sternen, Peter Pios
Writers: Johannes Grenzfurthner and Ben Roberts
Director: Johannes Grenzfurthner
Distributor: Film Movement
Release Date: October 10, 2025

SOLVENT opens with an onscreen quote from Norman Maclean, which begins, “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it …”

There is a lot of water, along with other fluids, in SOLVENT. Directed by Johannes Grenzfurthner, who wrote the script with Ben Roberts, SOLVENT is something of an ethical head-scratcher.

It denounces the horrors of the Holocaust in no uncertain terms. It compares these to other outrages against civilians, which seems fair enough. Where it gets dicey is that SOLVENT incorporates footage of actual Holocaust victims into a trippy commercial experience. One’s mileage will vary.

Our protagonist and narrator Gunner S. Holbrook (Jon Gries), founder of the company Relocator Europe LLC, starts by informing us it’s March 8, 2023. We’re in Austria, where Gunner and his employees are helping client Dr. Krystyna Szczepanska (Aleksandra Cwen) attempt to track down documents that may reveal the location of secret mass graves of concentration camp victims.

Gunner is wearing a helmet cam. Given the circumstances that ensue, we don’t question why he never removes it. They are at the farmhouse of Wolfgang Zinggl, who disappeared in 2014 at the age of ninety-four.

Zinggl had been stationed at Chelmno, the first Nazi extermination camp in Poland. Krystyna, who clearly shares an affectionate bond with Gunner, believes Zinggl kept secret records and perhaps trophies.

Zinggl’s grandson Ernst (filmmaker Grenzfurthner), who is in p.r., thinks perhaps publicity from this inquiry may help him professionally. He and his grandfather had what sounds like an awkward relationship. Neighbor Fredi Weinhappl (Roland Gratzner) was closer with the old man and knows the property. He also seems at least a little sympathetic to Zinggl’s beliefs.

Weinhappl leads the researchers to a previously unknown cellar. Disaster strikes.

Three months later, Gunner is obsessively determined to find out exactly what happened. He theorizes that it has something to do with water in the nearby river, as well as in a pipe that juts out of the cellar floor.

What follows is exceptionally graphic, including male genital mutilation. (An end credit assures us that no real genitals were harmed, nor was the mouse who plays a significant role in unrelated shots.) It’s as much as a sensory assault as one can have watching a movie.

Gries, glimpsed only in brief snatches, does a great job of playing Gunner, who is largely numbed by his own dark past. Cwen handles her emotional extremes well, Grenzfurthner is unafraid to make Ernst a complete jerk, and Gratzner puts across Fredi’s hard-to-rattle attitude with aplomb.

Grenzfurthner and co-writer Roberts inject some dark humor into the proceedings, and they also want to make us think. Maybe SOLVENT disrespects the dead whom it includes; maybe it’s the only way to make some viewers take notice of the past.

In any event, SOLVENT is only for those who are strong of stomach.

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