By Tara Kyle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CHELSEA — Somewhere on the streets of Vienna, police officer Kathy Gilleran's son disappeared in 2007 — and now, her long search for the truth is the subject of a documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival.
"Gone" follows upstate New York native Gilleran as she seeks justice for her son Aeryn, a former employee at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in Austria who was named Mr. Gay Austria in 2005 and 2006. The film premiered on Saturday night and will show twice more this week, when Aeryn would have turned 38 years old.
"He was an inspiration to me — he still is," Kathy Gilleran said of her son at the TFF press center Sunday. "He had so much more going for him than I do."
After Aeryn was last seen at the Kaiserbrundl men's sauna on the night of Oct. 29, 2007, Viennese detectives focused on Aeryn's homosexuality, and quickly dismissed the case as a "spontaneous suicide."
With 20 years on the Ithaca police force to her credit, Gilleran wouldn't accept the lack of evidence behind that conclusion. The film chronicles her still ongoing fight to peel back prejudice and layers of lies and find out what really happened to her son.
"The story itself just sounded impossible," said co-director Gretchen Morning, who first learned about Kathy's plight in one of a very small number of news reports that covered the disappearance. "What we really hope is that somebody with a conscious will come forward and tell what they know."
"Gone" is built almost entirely out of Kathy's own narration, recorded over two day-long interviews with Gretchen Morning and her husband and co-director, John Morning.
It was a process that Kathy called cathartic, but presented the Mornings with a major challenge — finding a way to visually represent events that had already occurred.
Part of the solution lay in giving Kathy her own video camera, which she took back with her on one of her annual pilgrimages to Vienna, walking viewers through her attempts to retrace Aeryn's steps.
The filmmakers also made extensive use of snapshots of Aeryn in the years before his death, which flash across the screen as Kathy shares the story of her son's life.
Aeryn had a deep appreciation for education, and for the church, Kathy said. Although she herself is a lapsed Catholic, she said Aeryn nearly entered the priesthood, but ultimately left his seminary because he couldn't preach against homosexuality.
He loved "Goonies" and "Absolutely Fabulous," Gregorian chants and Michael Buble. He had the gift of warmth, Kathy said, and charmed coworkers at UNIDO with baked goods and compliments on their outfits.
"He was just this great person. He's so much more than what they button holed him as," she said. "I know this film isn't going to bring Aeryn home… I hope people get a sense of who he was."
"Gone" is screening Tues., April 26 at 9:45 p.m. and Thurs., April 28 (Aeryn Gilleran's birthday) at 4:30 p.m. Both screenings are at Clearview Chelsea Cinemas.
Movie premiere tickets for the festival can be won by entering DNAinfo's Tribeca Film Festival sweepstakes here.
