Austria

A premonition of a horror film, lurking danger: A house – at night, slightly tilted in the camera’s view, eerily lit – surfaces from the pitch black, then sinks back into it again. A young woman begins to move slowly towards the building. She enters it. The film cuts crackle, the sound track grates, suppressed, smothered. Found footage from Hollywood forms the basis for the film. The figure who creeps through the images, who is thrown around by them and who attacks them is Barbara Hershey. Tscherkassky’s dramatic frame by frame re-cycling, re-copying and new exposure of the material, folds the images and the rooms into each other. Read More »

“John Cook found the subject of his first documentary in front of his doorstep. In order to pierce the heart of reality you do not need the largest bow – the protagonists and their story are simply too stimulating to pass them by. The janitor Gisi and Petrus – half her age, a gypsy , boxer and delinquent – are an unusual couple of the film , surrounded by a bunch of children . Today we would say that “I Just Can’t Go On” is a film about about precarity . It might be more precise to gescribe Gisi and Petrus as belonging to the class of the “outsiders” who at the margins of society build an enclave constantly threatened to tumble . Gisi works to her limit ; she cleans the house during the day and takes care of the children in the evening . Petrus shifts between energy-sapping occasional jobs and his boxing training , none of which he ever finishes successfully .Read More »

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The documentary THE GREAT MUSEUM is a curious, witty and humorous peek behind the scenes at a world-famous cultural institution. Director Johannes Holzhausen and his team spent more than two years gathering material at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Shot in the attentive style of direct cinema – with no off-screen commentary, no interviews and no background music – the film observes the various processes involved in creating a perfect setting for art. From the managing director to the cleaning services team, from the carriers to the art historians, the staff members at the museum are all interdependent cogs in the same machine.Read More »

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As the most southern island off the coast of Italy, Lampedusa is relatively close to Africa. This is where Zakaria got stranded – a Somali journalist who fled his country because of the war. He escaped that, but on Lampedusa he wrestles with fears and existential questions. Here he meets Giulia, an ageing woman facing a personal crisis on the same island. Together and separately, they try to get a grip on life.Read More »

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Austrian experimental documentary maker Peter Schreiner undertakes a psychoanalytic quest for human existence. It’s a cross between Freud and Sartre, magical and minimalist, as long as you dare.
Two wrinkled lovers, marked by life, expose their deepest inner emotions. Giuliana compares the vaults of her spirit with closed doors that you ‘have to open cautiously’. ‘But,’ Christian wonders, ‘does that make you happier?’ They talk slowly and calmly, looking for the right words for their inner demons. It all comes down to reason and feeling and where the two meet. About reality that looks both familiar and alienating. Read More »

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The moral conundrum at the heart of Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s “The Counterfeiters” is worthy of Kafka or Dostoevsky: What is the value of a single human life in the face of unspeakable evil? During World War II, one of Europe’s greatest counterfeiters decides, for a while, that his own survival is more important, until inevitably he learns that surrendering one’s soul and humanity may be worse than losing your life altogether.Read More »

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Sebastian and Alex are two egocentric yuppies who stockpile underhanded up-skirt shots and bully others for their own amusement. On a night out they come across an inebriated man passed-out on a park bench and decide to prank him by smuggling him across the border.Read More »

Synopsis: A female vampire from the planet Arus tries to vampirize the descendants of Dr. Fun Helsing. With her poisoned olive oil she transforms some teenagers into sex maniac vampires, over whom the crucifix has no power! Only Andrej Tarkowski videos make them shrink back in agony! The vampire hunters soon find themselves “sucked” into a whirlpool of lust and passion…Read More »

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A protege of Michael Haneke, Markus Schleinzer’s “Michael” is a triumph of uneasy cinema. With an unorthodox level of restraint, the director tells the story of a dull office drone who keeps a kidnapped young boy locked in his house. Despite its subversive edge, “Michael” successfully drains the shock out of a frightening premise and instead delivers a keen observational thriller. From its opening minutes, “Michael” reveals its alarming plot with a patient, naturalistic atmosphere.Read More »