Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

When her partner Erik has to cancel the holiday, lawyer Claudia Schmitt decides to travel alone to Lusatia. There she meets Mark Berner, who rents holiday cottages in the area. At first, the two are not sympathetic. But as Claudia run towards two little lynxes, they gradually come closer and fall in love. But then Claudia thinks he can find out a dark secret in Mark's past, which later turns out to be a misunderstanding. But it is already too late - Claudia is on her way back to Salzburg. But Mark decides to fight Claudia.

Astrid, Elli and Isabella go camping together as they used to. However, not only because Elli has breast cancer, nothing is like it used to be. Only when Astrid steals the savings of a man who has died in an accident the three leave old habits to renew their friendship in Italy.

Frank is a contract killer working for a large Styrian crime syndicate. When he is given the task of abducting a girl named Marlene and delivering her to the syndicate, everything changes for Frank. He falls in love with Marlene and disobeys his superiors, who in turn take matters into their own hands and abduct Marlene themselves. Now Frank has to battle the blunt forces of the syndicate in order to save Marlene.

An alpine village shortly before the First World War. Widowed forester Rufman has little sympathy for his sons Friedel and Elias. Both find it difficult to cope with themselves. One day, a stranger appears whose curiosity confuses the suspicious villagers. Only Elias feels attracted to him. When a murder takes place in the village, suspicion soon falls on the forester's boys.

Austrian television director Fritz Lehner makes his feature debut with the big-budget drama Jedermann's Fest, based on the 1911 play by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which in turn was based on a medieval tale. Originated in parts of England, the myth of Jan Jedermann ("John Everyman") deals with a rich man on his deathbed coming to terms with his life's failures. Not following much of a plot, the modernized version involves famous fashion designer Jedermann (Klaus Maria Brandauer) imagining his last big gala event while rendered unconscious as a result of a car accident in his Ferrari. He is a success in Vienna but not in fashionable Paris, so he wishes to impress French elder stateswoman Yvonne Becker (Juliette Greco).

A story about of one of the darkest periods in German history, an era in which the belief in occult forces was widespread. In Bamberg, witch hunts were fostered by a greedy and delusional Bishop Prince and reached their peak around 1630. This Bamberg ruler used the witch trials to purge his political enemies and enrich himself with their goods. Almost 1000 innocent men, women and children became his victims. BURNING SOULS deals with the era seen through the eyes of Johanna Wolff, a pharmacist's daughter, and the young physician Cornelius Weinmann. To save the innocent, he and a few courageous men revolt against the Bishop Prince.

In the spring of 1902, Viennese working-class daughter Marie König runs away from her beating father and is lured into a high-class brothel by an agent. Instead of the promised self-determined life "with horse-drawn carriage rides and silk dresses", she experiences closed doors, violence and exploitation. Only after years of agony does Marie confide in the journalist Emil Bader, who makes the conditions in the brothel public and takes the owner, Regine Riehl, to court.

Tourism is booming at the Pension Alpenrose. After a dying in an accident, Karin returns as one of the undead. In a cinema owned by a Nazi widow where the past is mourned, she brings the dead back to life.

Silent horror film directed by Julius Herska and starring Franz Höbling, Nora Gregor and Lucienne Delacroix. It is an adaptation of the 1869 novel The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo.

The Count Di Luna believes that his younger brother was murdered years before by a vengeful gypsy but still hopes that he may be alive. When he attempts to court the beautiful Leonora, he is enraged to discover that she has a lover – the troubadour, Manrico. Manrico and the Count duel, and afterwards Manrico reveals to Azucena, the woman he believes to be his mother, that when he had the opportunity to kill the Count he felt something holding him back.

The Weidemann have a perfume factory but the business goes bad and blindly trust Marie, a young woman with a gift for the fragrances, to launch a new essence that will save the company. But Marie falls in love with Bernard, the heir of the family that owns the bank continually denied that the appropriations to the Weidemann.

A short documentary about Chun, who lives in Vienna.

Philipp Hochmair, the newly appointed special investigator, and his partner Andreas Guenther immerse themselves in the equally dazzling and twilight world of the Prater showmen in the sixth "Vienna thriller". To solve the murder of a strikingly successful businessman, the opposing duo must not only uncover his secrets, but also get a tight-knit circle of suspects to speak up.

A security guard working at an art museum in Vienna crosses paths with a Canadian woman in town to visit her ailing cousin.

Musical film-noir parody about Max Müller, an underemployed private detective who is asked by his beautiful but secretive client, Ingrid Bergmann to look for her disappeared fiancé. Together with his assistant Larry he combs the underworld and little by little it becomes clear that his mysterious client is not what she seems to be.

Georgy Hillmaier, single again, returns to Vienna after a long stay in Thailand. Completely penniless, without a job or place to stay, he ends up on the street until he learns that he has meanwhile become a father. In order to pay off the overdue alimony, Georgy has to get back into the call boy business in a brothel exclusively for women, run by his sister Gitti.

Because of its name, the small Austrian town of Bad F* is a tourist attraction—until a landslide cuts it off from the rest of the country. Three years later, a murder sets a multitude of devastating developments in motion...

Analog celluloid strips are disappearing. Is film dying, or just changing? Are the world's film archives on the brink of a dark age? Renowned filmmakers, museum curators, historians, and engineers help dramatize the future of film and the cinema in the age of digital moving pictures.

Caroline Binder has a nice home, a working marriage, and a chronically-ill heart. Heart specialist Paul Hoffmann promises his patient healing through a new surgical method and keeps his promise. But Caroline cannot do with her new life, because the rhythm of this has been determined by her sick heart for the past 20 years. She feels betrayed about her identity and starts to look at how and why life is worth living.

Heroic Struggle in Snow and Ice is a 1917 Austro-Hungarian propaganda newsreel film produced by Sascha-Film for the Imperial and Royal War Press Headquarters. The film is hand-colored and presented in two parts. It depicts the fighting on the Alpine Front between Italy and Austria-Hungary.

Vienna in 2021. Europe is divided into American sectors. The currency is being converted from the euro to the dollar. Johnny Bush (the son of American peacekeeper George Bush) is the Chancellor of Austria. English becomes the primary language; dialects are forbidden. The Viennese meet underground (with the dinosaurs) to practice their Viennese dialect. The German journalist August Maria Kaiser comes to Vienna to research a report on the missing Jörg Haider. Haider had ruled Austria for the past 20 years and was expelled by the Americans. On his journey to uncover the truth about Haider, Kaiser meets many acquaintances.

A vet has successfully taken over her father's practice. Now the already smouldering marital crisis comes to a head when anonymous letters accuse her husband of having an affair. Meanwhile, the doctor is being courted by the local mayor.

Three crooks come out of jail on probation and, taking advantage of the economic boom in Germany, they continue their shady business quite legally this time.

Fresh out of a psychiatric hospital, Pia moves back in with her parents to get her life together. Torn between a new job, lovesickness, psychotropic drugs and social stigmatization, she emerges into a world where everything seems out of control.

The 16-year-old daughter of the highest dignitary in Hüttenberg is found murdered in the disused mine. For the first time, Muck has to deal with a case of this magnitude.

The composer Kristian Wernher is supposed to transport uranium-containing rock samples from Brazil to Austria, specifically to Lake Wörthersee, for his father, the head of “Internationale Berg AG”. Everything is carried out in the strictest secrecy, but soon two agents are after Kristian. But that is not his biggest problem. An unpleasant surprise awaits Kristian at the delivery point.

A young heiress leads a life of excess and wants to marry a man her rich father despises. When her father suspiciously dies, and someone tries to kill her, she surrounds herself with her cousins, friends and lovers, all possible suspects.

Lawyer Maria Rohn takes on the case of Martin Siebeck. The truck driver allegedly ran over a man on the highway. Siebeck denies the crime and states that two people threw the victim in front of his truck at full speed. The more Maria Rohn looks into the case, the more she notices inconsistencies. Her husband Günther is also behaving more and more strangely. It seems that he was also involved in the accident...

When her young son Nikolai disappears without a trace in the subway, German journalist Katharina Wagner suddenly realizes that she has powerful enemies in St. Petersburg. She has returned to show her child his father's grave – but did her husband Viktor really take his own life, or did he stir up a nest of scorpions that ultimately killed him? Katharina has few allies in her fight for Nikolai, but then it becomes clear who is truly on her side.

Jag Mandir is a quiet and often overlooked film in the vast oeuvre of Werner Herzog. Apparently, 20 hours of footage was shot that covered the whole fest and the film hardly presents us a twentieth of that. A native walking into the film in between may well fail to immediately realize that it is his country that is being shown and these are figures from the mythology of various sections of his nation. The bulk of the film consists of footage of an elaborate theatrical performance for the Maharana Arvind Singh Mewar at the City Palace of Udaipur, Rajasthan staged by André Heller.

The film deals with questions that have long tormented us: Who was the first civil servant? How has the civil service developed over the course of history? What did Mr. Weber, Engineer Breitfuß, Ms. Knackal, and Mr. Claus do before MA 2412 existed? How did they meet? Why was MA 2412 actually founded? What if the EU decides to introduce a Europe-wide Christmas department? And what is the point of it all?

When the body of a postman is found on Lake Neusiedl, the investigation shows that it is probably a robbery, and several of the villagers fall into the circle of suspects: Five young men now need an alibi. Walter was with Elisabeth on the night of the murder, but cannot rely on her support. She is not only the sister of Stephan, who is also suspected, but also the fiancée of the gendarme who is leading the investigation into the case.

They gave the smugglers all their money and risk their life on their journey across borders: Three women from a small town in Moldavia, living now in Austria as cleaning women. On top of their hard job they live a life in illegality without documents, far away from their children and family for years.

The beautiful and sophisticated Hedda Gabler has found a comfortable but mundane arrangement with her life – a successful, compliant husband, a large house, and an affiliation with the upper crust of society - when suddenly, after years of absence, a wild and tempestuous ex-lover reappears on her doorstep, threatening to destroy her new life.

Simon Polt (Erwin Steinhauer) is no longer a gendarme. Arrived in retirement, he participates cheerfully in the Weinviertel on village life. When a corpse is found after a feast, his sense of right and wrong again becomes noticeable. The police do not see any third party debt. He sees it differently.

Gottfried Binder, a simple employee in the pathology department of the University Hospital Zurich, is suffering from lung cancer and does not have long to live. He is convinced that the fatal disease was actually intended for someone else. For his superior, the unpopular Dr. Götze. The senior physician has always harassed him and smoked incessantly. Binder is certain that Götze made him ill in this way. Binder is inspired by the idea of achieving justice and getting rid of Götze. And he already knows how...

Count Bobby assumes the identity and dresses of his sick aunt because they desperately need the money for chaperoning Mary, a wealthy American heiress, on her trip through Europe. Bobby falls in love with Mary, but his dress is a handicap.

Nick Gutlicht lives of illegally selling valuable books, owes money to a bunch of other crooks and has to hide from them. By chance he ends up in the mansion of the famous, now very old philosopher Curt Ledig, who despite the age related forgetfulness and pathological kitchen phobia resists to move to his daughter. Nick is hired by the family as watchdog. Now Curt can work on a presentation for the upcoming symposium, which anybody thinks he's capable of anymore. Nick thinks he has an excellent hiding place. This partnership of convenience of the two individuals quickly develops its own momentum. Curt regards Nick as an exciting research object and subjects him to an absurd therapy. For Nick it's a unique opportunity to fund his finances with Curt's phenomenal library. The strange couple is going through turmoil of incalculable proportions.

Young Count Georg Wolkersheim is sent to the Congress of Vienna to represent the interests of his country, Reuss-Schleiz-Greiz. Tensions arise between the count, his wife Melanie, and their two chamberlains, and when the four attend a court ball, Melanie leaves Georg, assumes the identity of a famous actress, and attracts the affections of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria.

A nameless man receives phone calls intended for someone else and ends up pretending to be that person, while a female character rebels against her author.

Having just arrived in Vienna, eight-year-old Tao is forced to watch as two men murder his relatives in their Chinese restaurant. The killers catch him too, but the boy manages to escape. When Ester, who has recently gone blind, crosses his path, he follows her into her apartment. Unfortunately, the strange woman doesn't understand his excitement. Meanwhile, LKA officers Decker and Kriesch take over the murder case. Not at all reassuring for the witness, because the two killers and the two officers are one and the same person...

For Neele and her life partner Steff, the dream of having one's own child finally seems to come true: Steff is pregnant. However, there was a confusion in the artificial insemination - instead of their carefully selected sperm donor, they caught a sperm donation from a gay couple: Kalle and Jens also want a baby and consider the confusion as a kind of coincidence. While the two men look forward to their time as active fathers, Neele and Steff see their harmonious trinity at risk.

Two police officers, Roli and Ferdinand, control the road users on WIener Höhenstraße. You are literally on the border between town and country.

Herbert lives a rather simple life, left to his own devices. He works as a projectionist in a shabby Viennese movie theater and lives alone with his red nameless cat in the free caretaker's apartment of a somewhat run-down apartment building. Now and then he visits his mother in a nursing home, meets with an old friend of his father, or comes to meetings of a savings club. Saving money is pretty much the center of his life because he has a dream. He wants to emigrate to the U.S. to buy his own movie theater and to reunite with his long-lost father. But when Rita, a young student, moves into the apartment building things in his life are changed completely.

Le Due Croci brings us the story of Blessed Titus Brandsma, a Dutch Carmelite friar, Catholic priest, journalist and professor of philosophy. Brandsma was vehemently opposed to Nazi ideology and died in the infamous Dachau concentration camp. He has been beatified as a Martyr of the Faith.

The short film tells the story about three brothers who try to dive back into their childhood by re-enacting an old family picture.

Their names are Hans Kleiber and Harry Groß. They wear police badges and are causing pure chaos. The cops from Lake Wörthersee have been tasked with bringing Verena, the daughter of public prosecutor Brösing, home safely. The young woman was an assistant to the magician Carnetti and is now dating the cuddly rocker Faltinger. The Alpine dream team is supported by the nearsighted policewoman Jutta.

In her trilingual-titled film, Viktoria Schmid meditatively transforms forest and seascapes in Spain, Lithuania, and Lower Austria, by triple exposing 16mm color negative film—using red, green, and blue filters to create layers of color and time.

The film is set in post-war Germany. It tells the story of widow Rosemarie Hermann, who flees Silesia with her sister Bettina, her father, and their two children Maria and Johannes ("Jojo"). In the general chaos, she loses her daughter. In her attempt to find her, she finally receives support from Harald Bergmann, who works for the tracing service of the German Red Cross and also finds her a job there. Maria initially lives in a children's home near Lübeck and is then placed with a foster family.

With a sense of humour, this documentary questions the condition of women from the angle of the image and perception of their body, and covers the new taboos and aesthetic diktats concerning their genitals in the era of the sexual revolution and contemporary feminism.

Michael considers himself a genius criminal and plans the big coup. He forms three new gangs who know nothing about each other and each only know part of his plan. In the background Michael pulls the strings and mercilessly plays the actors on his stage against each other. This strategy also poses unsolvable problems for the police until something goes wrong and the house of cards collapses.

Two murders of prostitutes in a similar way - no wonder that Commissioner Sandra Mohr suspects a connection. The obvious suspicion that a serial killer could be up to mischief in Styria is initially dismissed by her supervisor Sascha Bergmann.

Old Sanna lives in the mountain village of Gschaid. At Christmas, she receives a long-awaited visit: Sanna's son with his wife and children. At the same time, mountaineers make a gruesome discovery. The body of a man is recovered from the ice of the Alpine glacier. It is Martin, who saved the lives of Sanna and her brother many years ago. Sanna's grandchildren are eager to hear the whole story. And so Sanna tells them about the two hostile villages of Gschaid and Millsdorf and a miraculous rescue from the ice and snow at Christmas.

When SHE finally wants to put an end to it after further arguments, HE asks her for one last day. A day on which he can prove to her that it still makes sense to fight for the relationship. The two spend their last (first?) day in the country.

On Valentines Day, 1931, Universal Pictures released the film Dracula - the first true horror movie. Its worldwide success catapulted the film's lead actor, Romanian-born Bela Lugosi, to overnight stardom. "Bela Lugosi: The Fallen Vampire" traces the life and career of this mysterious man whose name became synonymous with the evil, yet magnetically compelling Count Dracula. Using archival still and film clips as well as interviews with film historians, actors and Lugosi himself, the special chronicles the meteoric rise and then precipitous decline of a talented yet tragic man who forever changed the face of horror films.

Set in an old suburb of Vienna traversed by the local railway line and full of old dilapidated houses. In this district, and old man lives and when his neighbour dies and new tenants move in his existence is transformed.

A look at how form, color, smell, consistency, the sounds made during eating, manufacturing technique, history and stories influence food design.

Mountaineering on enclosed terrain, the young doctor Clara Lang discovers a mummified corpse. Apparently, the dead has been in the ice for years. No one knows who it is at the bottom of the valley. When Clara's friend David wants to inspect the site more closely, he too is deadly. Clara is devastated. Her grief is compounded by the suspicion that David was murdered. Abandoned by the authorities, Clara stretches out her tentacles on her own and begins to investigate.