Diagonale review: Soldier Monika (2024)
Diagonale
Documentary Competition
Some of us remember Soldier Ahmet, a son of Turkish immigrants, a devout Austrian patriot, soldier, field medic and instructor in the Austrian Army, a man who loved his family, but defied its long-standing traditions by refusing to get married with a girl brought from the “Old Country” and, lastly, an amateur stage actor who did not want to give up on his dream about a professional career in theatre. Throughout Janis Lenz’s 2021 documentary, Ahmet searched for his true self, trying to resolve his inner contradictions.
However, Soldier Ahmet seems like a total “normie” compared to the titular character of Paul Poet’s newest documentary Soldier Monika: a transgender former soldier/drill instructor and current legal adviser at the Austrian Ministry of Defence and a conspiracy theorist who is connected both to the far-right and the queer-left, while usually voting green because of her love to nature. Throughout the film, Monika also searches for her true self, but that kind of search is more fantastic and dangerous, resembling a roller coaster ride.
Monika Donner was not always Monika. She was born and raised as Toni who was also quite a character, a skinhead hooligan and “a mountain of muscles” who was saved from sharing the destiny of his neo-nazi buddies who served time in jail. Toni also had an avatar of sorts, or an “enhanced ego” of a tough drill instructor of the paramilitary group Centurio. Oddly enough, at one point, Toni Centurio and the drag queen Monique existed in parallel: Toni on weekdays and Monique on weekends. At one point, there was only Monika left, and she made history as the first Austrian person who reassigned their gender without going through a sex-change operation.
Before meeting her current spouse, Jasmin, Toni/Monika was also married twice, to a young and gentle Norwegian beauty and to a stern Bulgarian dominatrix. Monika also firmly stands on the ideals of peace, love and harmony, driven by the absolute of freedom of personal choices, but also fantasises of crushing her enemies or pretty much everybody who tries to box her in, especially the Anglo-American-dominated West. Assuming that she still pretty much role-plays her life, or writes and directs a fantasy movie with herself as a star, would sound accurate. The question is, however, how to approach such a person.
Poet who, judging by his track record, proves able to lend a sympathetic ear to any person on the margins of society, “freak” or “crazy”, decided to go all-in here. He embraces Monika’s contradictions, hoping that she will do so as well. He offers her the opportunity to direct a theatre play of her life, casting professional actors and actresses to play the avatars of her parents and both wives. He follows her on her errands, public appearances on television or at political gatherings, and private meetings with friends from the past and present. If it were not enough of layers of real-life Monika, we are about to get some more in the form of animated or live-action fantasy sequences (one of which includes our dear colleague Neil Young as the “Anglo-Saxon Axis of Evil”, which is hilariously funny), and also some great new wave punk music (great job, Gewalt!), complete with a couple of legitimate music videos, on the side.
Can it be a bit too much? Certainly! Is it at times difficult to grasp, handle and digest? Probably! And, most importantly, is it fun? Hell yeah! And that is how it goes with contradictions: they tend to be extreme, wild and crazy, so we have a choice either to embrace them or to ignore them totally. Soldier Monika is a perfect example of a take-it-or-leave-it, tough-as-nails, provocative film with a kick-in-the-ass punk attitude, so the author of this text decides to take it.
Soldier Monika premiered at Doc Lisboa last year and has since travelled internationally. We caught up with the film at Diagonale.
Country: Austria
Language: German, English, French
Year: 2024
Runtime: 109′
Cast/With: Monika Donner, Jasmin Donner, Maria Hofstätter, Sarah Zaharnski,
Mateja Meded, Neil Young, Paul Poet, Roland Düringer, Gottfried Küssel,
Nathalie Rettenbacher, Natascha Strobl, Ulrike Guérot
Cinematography by: Simone Hart
Editing by: Oliver Neumann
Music by: Gewalt
Sound design by: Atanas Tcholakov
Sound recording by: Joseph Nikolussi
Production design by: Ruth Grau, Camilla Smolders
Costume design by: Sophie Marie Frauscher, Michael Ellinger
Animation by: Thomas Auge Aigelsreiter, Andreas Paar
Produced by: Sabine Moser, Oliver Neumann
Production company: FreibeuterFilm
Supported by: FFW – Filmfonds Wien, BMKÖS – Kunst und Kultur, FISA – Filmstandort Austria,
CINE ART, Land Niederösterreich Kultur, ORF
