Peacock, the feature directing debut of Austrian writer-director Bernhard Wenger, has spent the past year strutting confidently across the festival circuit. Since premiering at Venice Critics’ Week, the satire on self-presentation and identity has picked up momentum — and now hopes to keep that streak going all the way to the Oscars.
This summer, Austria selected the movie — led by rising German star Albrecht Schuch and inspired by Japan’s rent-a-friend agencies — as its submission for the 2026 international Oscar race.
Peacock (Pfau – Bin ich echt?) centers on Matthias, a man who has perfected the art of becoming whoever his clients need him to be. As a rent-a-companion, he shifts effortlessly between roles: attentive partner, dutiful son, cultured boyfriend. But his talent for pleasing others comes at a cost. His girlfriend, Sophia (Julia Franz Richter), begins to wonder if any of the “real” Matthias is still there, sending him into an existential tailspin.
Wenger traces the film’s origins back to a moment of discovery. “When I first came across these rent-a-friend agencies in an article in The New Yorker, I was very interested, because I didn’t know they existed,” he tells THR. “So, I went to Japan and met people working at these agencies, and they started because of the big isolation and loneliness in society. People who don’t have anybody in their lives can rent someone.”
But what captured his imagination most were the people performing the roles. “The thing that interested me more was the self-presentation [angle], because people use these agencies to present themselves better in public — to hide lies, to manipulate people, to show power,” he explains. “These are all reasons why they would work in nearly every society in the world. And I mainly focused on this part to do a film that is a metaphor for social media, without showing social media.”
Albrecht Schuch (left) with Julia Franz Richner (far right) and a very large canine in Bernhard Wenger’s Peacock.
Courtesy of Geyrhalter Film/CALA Film/Albin Wildner
One person Wenger met had a line that stuck with him. “Because of his odd job where he has to be someone else every day, in real life, he didn’t know how to be himself anymore, and I found that very tragic, but decided to build a satirical story around it.”
That mix of dark irony and emotional fragility shaped the tone of the film. “I look at life with humor,” Wenger says. “It’s just more beautiful that way. And I think especially in times like this, humor and optimism are definitely something we all need.”
He’s well aware that Austrian cinema carries a certain reputation. “He told me he absolutely loves them, but whenever he watches an Austrian film, he’s depressed for three days,” Wenger recalls of a conversation with a filmmaker at an international festival. “That is very different from how I decided to make films, as I was inspired in my youth by Scandinavian cinema and British black comedy. But I still have this deep Austrian tragedy that we all carry within us that’s also in the film a bit.”
With a theatrical release in Japan planned for next year, Wenger is curious to see how audiences there respond. “Audiences all over the world have somehow reacted the same way. They laughed at the same jokes, they saw themselves, and they saw the criticism of society,” he says. “But sometimes I do see nuances. For example, when I showed the film in Scandinavia at the Stockholm Film Festival, it was completely quiet for the beginning of the film, and I thought, ‘Oh God, they hate it.’ So I left the screening and took a very sad stroll through rainy Stockholm. And when I came back about 45 minutes into the film, audiences were laughing so much and were enjoying the film so much because the darker the film got, the more they enjoyed it.”
At the Chicago Film Festival, audience reactions were different again. “People were so shocked” about a scene involving a dog and a pool, he says. “In Europe, the reactions to that scene were much more dry.”
Peacock stars Schuch (left) as Matthias, a man who has perfected his job as a “rent-a-companion.”
Courtesy of Geyrhalter Film/CALA Film/Albin Wildner
When Peacock was named Austria’s Oscar submission, Wenger found himself caught off guard. “I was completely overwhelmed,” he says. “Of course, it’s a huge joy and honor. This is such a great bonus, so I do not feel any big pressure. I just feel happiness and enjoy every moment of it, because it’s my first feature film, and I would not have thought that we would be doing an Oscar campaign.”
The film arrives amid renewed attention to rent-a-friend stories, including Hikari’s Rental Family, starring Brendan Fraser. “I haven’t seen it myself. I’ve just heard a lot about it, including from some people who’ve seen both films,” Wenger says. “I think it’s a very Hollywood feel-good take on rent-a-friend, which is, of course, very different from Peacock.”
As for what comes next, Wenger isn’t slowing down. “I’m currently working on an idea for a series and two feature film ideas,” he says. “All of them will be in the same handwriting with the same kind of humor, with which I will continue in my filmmaking.” He keeps the details close for now, adding only: “The only thing I can already tell you is that I’m always interested in character-driven stories, interpersonal relationships and misunderstandings, everyday life absurdities, and somehow I tend to circle back to the topic of breakups. Because the biggest subjects of cinema are love and death, and breakups are the death of love, which is a beautiful theme for a film.”
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