Rome Film Fest 2026: Eurotrash (dir. Frauke Finsterwalder) | Review
A wealthy Swiss family reckons with inherited guilt and the emptiness of privilege in this visually beautiful but heavy-handed adaptation of Christian Kracht’s novel.
Screened at this year’s Rome Film Fest, Frauke Finsterwalder’s Eurotrash adapts Christian Kracht’s cult novel of the same name. A darkly comic, autofictional road trip through the wreckage of a wealthy Swiss family, we follow the writer Phillip (Alexander Fehling) as he returns home after his father’s death to care for his elderly, alcoholic mother, Helene (Barbara Sukowa). Together, they make their way on an increasingly absurd journey across Switzerland, with Helene drunkenly determined to give away her fortune with reckless abandon. Just beneath the surface of their insane excess of wealth lies an uncomfortable reckoning with family history, inherited guilt and the legacy of the Nazi past.
Frauke Finsterwalder’s adaptation is a beautiful-looking film. The Swiss landscapes are undeniably magnificent, the colours luxurious, and the opening shots of swimming pool extravagance are gorgeous. Kracht’s best seller has been compared to writers like Bret Easton Ellis in its presentation of the affluent and disaffected, filled with characters for whom material privilege has long since ceased to offer much meaning and so turn inwards to search for existential resolution.
Eurotrash joins the wave of recent cinematic critiques of the restless rich (think Triangle of Sadness, Succession, The Menu, The White Lotus…). But the story has a prescient twist: Switzerland is often regarded as having been neutral during WW2, but the Swiss are still reaping the rewards of Nazi gold (having made what would currently be estimated at billions during the War). Phillip suffers under the weight of this legacy, which taints his privilege further.
The question of how wealth, privilege and familial identity remain entangled with the legacy of Nazism is central to Kracht’s novel. The film, by contrast, too often reduces these complex themes to something far more straightforward, without the book’s ambiguity and emotional complexity.
The wonderful visuals and prescient subject matter sit jarringly against the actors’s performances, which rarely feel anything but stilted – not helped by the on-the-nose screenplay. Where Kracht’s writing is ironic, ambiguous and genuinely moving, the film spells out every single idea in childlike clarity.
Eurotrash never quite captures what makes Kracht’s novel so gripping. Money has failed to provide meaning to the characters, but the film itself seems unable to get beneath the surface of its own ideas. The irony is lost, the emotional ambiguities flattened, and what should be a deeply uncomfortable encounter with family, wealth and history becomes a much more literal comedy. For anyone interested in the story, I’d recommend going back to the book instead.
The 21st edition of the Rome Film Fest is running from October 13th to 25th, 2026.
