Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

Erich „Rickerl“ Bohacek is a likeable loser who on the one hand tries to build up a music career and on the other still wants to be a good father for his little son.

Birgit Reincke is a resolute and quick-witted investigator in her early 50s who has seemingly given up her job. She is assisted by Jonas Becker, an aggressive and impulsive rookie detective, and Marie Sonnleitner, a brilliant scientist.

The head of a fashion school spots a girl on television with exactly the angelic face he needs for one of his pictures. He has no idea that she's his student.

Eva, who earns her money as a call girl, learns that she has inherited the Palace Hotel in St. Wolfgang. She immediately quits her job and travels to Lake Wolfgang with her friend Maxie. But immediately upon arrival, they encounter a nasty surprise: the building is an old, dilapidated building with a mountain of debt. What now? The two pretty girls receive unexpected help from six students camping on the hotel lawn. Together, with rags and brooms, they transform the old Palace Hotel into the "Black Horse Inn." But in town, the competition, which, as we all know, never sleeps, is the renowned "White Horse Inn"...

The Petermann family decides to take a family vacation to the sunny south. The Petermanns are grandfather, father Max, mother Biggi, children Stupsi, son Andy, and pretty Monika, Max Petermann's sister. They rent a speedy sled because Max Petermann has just gotten his driver's license. Not only are there various starting difficulties due to a lack of driving experience, but there is also a special case with the car: hidden deep in the upholstery are secret documents that a trio of gangsters are trying to smuggle abroad. A mix-up of the license plates causes some turbulence. Willi Polz is assigned by the trio to keep an eye on the Petermanns in order to secure the documents at the right opportunity. Of course, something always gets in the way on the trip to Bella Italia. The fact that Willi falls in love with the blonde Monika is the least surprising thing. But the grandfather's actions are the real sensation.

Horst receives the monthly pension from his grandmother. The only problem is, that she is dead. As a local politician wants to congratulate the grandmother to her birthday Horst "borrows" an old lady from a hospital nearby, not recognizing that he just kidnapped actress Elfriede Ott.

The investigation of an escort girl found dead in a luxury hotel leads the detectives on a dangerous trail, flustering the local authorities of the wealthy town.

Unhappy accountant Karl has a crush on Eva who seems to prefer dates with execs. But real trouble ensues when he inherits his uncle's apartment and in its wake a group of shady characters involved in illegal business affairs.

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).

Because the late Berlin artist Dorn failed to pay his taxes or inform the family for years, his widow Erika and daughters must urgently sell the splendid estate in Tuscany they hardly visited since his death anyhow. Eldest daughter Valerie, junior partner in fiancé Andreas Imdahl's rising architects firm, travels ahead to negotiate with the suitable candidate Robert Beck, a fellow German, who agreed trough mayor-publican Fredo to keep on caretaker Antonio 'Toni' Gianni. By the time Andreas arrives, he finds Viviane unfaithful with her study lover Stefan Korten, but is interested by Toni's daughter. Second daughter Susi and her fellow arts student fiancé Bruno Tomasi have several announcements. Mother arrives stating she decided to sell the Cologne home instead, but Robert offers an alternative. Written by KGF Vissers

Mrs. Pospisil lives alone in an apartment in an old building in Vienna. The elderly lady's increasing forgetfulness prompts her son to suggest that she move into a nursing home. But then suddenly a crack opens up in one of the walls of her apartment, through which something enters Mrs. Pospisil's world that will change her life forever. Paul Ertl's highly efficient and picture-perfect The Crack is a psychologically underpinned mid-length horror miniature that transforms into a utopia as casual as it is original as it is gently disturbing, and is ultimately also a powerful plea for the autonomy of older people.

Judith works as an emergency doctor in Berlin. When she inherits a house in Austria from the family who gave her away as a child, her quest to solve the mystery of her origins turns into a nightmarish journey into the past and the dark places of her soul.

In the second part of the successful children's book adaptation, Franz, Gabi and Eberhard go on a turbulent hunt for criminals during the summer holidays – and uncover a completely different secret in the process.

A restaurant cashier, who has a mutual attraction to the restauranteur, has a secret passion for dance. As soon as she finishes work she is off down to the dance studio for a practice. She has a chance meeting with a handsome impresario, who promises to make her into the greatest dancer the world has ever known.

Felix, a young projectionist, daydreams himself out of the loneliness of his projection booth and into a fantastic universe in which the characters in the films become his own. His dreams, wishes and reality become one in the fuzzy reflection on the projection window. A surreal play by Peter Patzak.

Art dealer Salvatore Viviano and director Angela Christlieb embark on a search for the lost artist collective Gelitin, which since the 1990s has shattered the borders of "good taste" again and again with extravagant actions and installations. Interviews with old companions and artist friends in the U.S., Europe, and Asia are linked with anarchically montaged Gelitin archive material: intense, transgressive, experimental, gaudily colorful, funny, and virulent.

Oberst Alfred Redl heads the military intelligence department of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Frequent letters from the Russian Empire, however, make him suspect of sharing his knowledge with unauthorized authorities.

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.

Johanna and Arnold Melzer are a well-coordinated team. He takes care of the kitchen, and she looks after the guests of their picturesque inn on the southern Styrian wine route. When Arnold runs off with the young kitchen assistant Valentina, leaving behind a mountain of debt, Johanna is shocked. Savings bank manager Josef Kappl grants her another loan, but he has some ulterior motives.

A male body is found in the Steyr breakthrough reservoir. The police officers of the LKA Linz do not think about suicide. Shortly afterwards it turns out that the dead man is the man who killed Sepp Ahorner's wife and daughter in an accident and who Sepp had been looking for for years.

One autumn, Edgar, a 12 year old boy, spends a holiday with his mother at a plush hotel in Switzerland. His father, a busy lawyer, remains at the family home in Vienna. When he sees a stylish motorcar pull up at the hotel, Edgar wastes no time befriending its owner, an amiable dandy. The latter pays more attention to the boy’s mother than to the boy himself, and decides to use Edgar to wheedle his way into her affections. When Edgar realises he has been used, he is far from happy...

Else joins her aunt to spend her holidays in a remote luxury hotel in India. She receives a message by her mother disclosing that her father has enormous debts and her mother asks Else for help. This gets Else into serious troubles - with deadly consequences.

Much has changed for Simon Polt, a retired gendarmerie inspector. He's embarking on new career paths, and his future with his long-time girlfriend, Karin Walter, suddenly took on a completely new perspective. Polt has little contact with the police, who now watch over the small villages in the Wiesbach Valley—his only friend is Norbert Sailer, a law enforcement officer who's just his style. But the discovery of a stranger's body completely disrupts Simon Polt's quiet world: No one claims to have known the dead man, but some seem to know more about him than they're willing to admit to the police.

Director Hüseyin Tabak explores the legacy of Yilmaz Güney — political dissident, convicted murderer, and visionary Kurdish filmmaker — who directed the 1982 Palme d'Or–winning Yol from inside prison and died in exile just two years later.

Das radikal Böse is a German-Austrian documentary that attempted to explore psychological processes and individual decision latitude "normal young men" in the German Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and SD, which in 1941 during the Second World War as part of the Holocaust two million Jewish civilians shot dead in Eastern Europe.

Documentary about the production of The Third Man (1949).

An engineer, a musician, and a salesman are heading off on summer vacation in an old VW and a rented caravan. The confirmed bachelors want to enjoy their freedom. But the musician falls in love with a hotel telephone operator, and the engineer with a merchant's daughter. This leads to turmoil, with lots of fun and music!

Patriotic Austrian costume drama, about the martyr Medardus who opposed Napoleon's occupation of Vienna in 1809. The plot proceeds in a series of confrontations with Medardus, his mother and sister, the blind exiled Count of Valois, his ambitious daughter, and Napoleon himself (portrayed as a cool strategist), including several brief flashbacks.

A lady killer tracked by the police, takes refuge at a psychiatrist's home, and the doctor tells him three stories, to convince him that crime does not pay

Together with her best friend Milena, the ambitious dancer Anna works hard to realize her dream of a successful dance career. When the chance arose to get one of the coveted places in the corps de ballet, Anna was immediately hooked and trained day and night. The only opposition to her plan comes from her father, who wants to protect her from the immense pressure. His worries do not seem unfounded: Anna's path to the top turns out to be steep and rocky - and gradually leads to a nightmare.

René desperately needs a new haircut before he flies to New York. When he discovers a mysterious Viennese hairdressing salon, his initial joy is quickly overshadowed by worrying questions: Why was the hairdresser so hesitant to let him in? Why did she lock the front door? Was it wise to ask a stranger for a shave? And who is that pale old man next to him, who neither speaks nor moves?

On the trail of a runaway wolf, wolf guardian Hannah reluctantly visits her grandmother's native Czech village, close to the Austrian border. Hannah's mother lives here and is treated as a social outcast due to her attempts of coming to terms with the traumatic family history. Hannah, too, can no longer escape the hushed-up past. It is time to break the silence.

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.

Napoleon at Saint Helena (German: Napoleon auf Sankt Helena) is a 1929 German silent historical film directed by Lupu Pick and starring Werner Krauss, Hanna Ralph and Albert Bassermann. The film depicts the final years of Napoleon between 1815 and 1821 during his period of exile on the British Atlantic island of Saint Helena following his defeat at Waterloo.

Just gotten dumped via text message by her boyfriend, Ottilie Giesecke from Berlin cannot resist her father’s offer to spend a few days holidaying at Lake Wolfgangsee in the Austrian alps. Although the city slicker doesn’t think much of Schlager songs and mountains, she moves into the “Weißes Rössl” inn, where Dr. Otto Siedler immediately courts her. At least in Leopold, Ottilie finds a kindred spirit, because the headwaiter has been hopelessly in love with Josepha, boss of the hotel, for years. While the two cheer each other up, the next problem is already looming: Sigismund Sülzheimer wants to buy the Weißes Rössl in order to blow it up - of course out of heartache.

Leopold Wallisch, nick-named "Lemming", was fired from the homicide department due to intrigues by his colleague Krotznig. Now he works for a small Viennese private detective agency and spies on potential adulterers. When the Latin teacher Grinzinger is murdered while under Lemming's observation, he gives himself a shove and decides to solve the case himself. "Lemming's First Case", an adaptation of the best-seller by the Austrian author Stefan Slupetzky, promises pure crime comedy.

The film portrays the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914.

In a luxurious cruise a woman recognizes the voice of the man who killed her husband 50 years ago during World War II. The reunion brings bitter memories in women. Based on the novel" The long wave after the keel" by Pavel Kohout.

For one night Michael Pilz rides through New York with a remarkable taxi driver, Jeff Perkins. Sitting by his side, looking and listening, sometimes intervening, he uses his handy high-8 camera like a writing instrument, a „camera-stylo“.

Lisa Weber’s portrait of Claudia, who had a son when she was 15 and now lives together with him, her mother and her brother in Vienna, is an affectionate and gentle film about the passing of time and about what happens when seemingly nothing is happening.

The wealthy farmer Karl Bruckner and his fiancée Anna are about to marry when Karl is killed in a car accident. While a world collapses for Anna, Charles' stepbrother Franz takes the opportunity to take possession of the family-owned farm. He lets Charles's will, in which Anna had been considered, disappear and swears a perjury that there was never a probate document. Anna is chased from the yard and leaves the village with her little daughter. Years later, she returns to finally bring the truth to light. Ludwig Anzengruber's famous folk piece as a gripping ...

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.

Interpol detective Wilton, known for his powers of deduction, is set on a gang of bank and jewel robbers who are up to mischief in Marseille. Despite some false leads, he can shed light on the murky affair. A conventional but relatively exciting crime film that strives for atmospheric density but is not immune to the clichés of the genre. Charpentier's trivial novel is the first crime thriller in a series that pretends to be the publication of Commissioner Wilton's diaries.

An unhappily in-love car mechanic living in a small village finds himself at a crossroads; the apparent senselessness of life saddens him, and his only friend, the local butcher, is not much help.

The protagonist, Franz, copies the paintings of old masters. He slowly loses his sense of reality, resulting in angst-ridden fantasies and a desire for self-destruction. Franz has an uphill battle with the loss of values and spread of capitalism around him. He rejects advertising to the point of destroying its manifestations.

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.

On the final journey of the legendary Majestic Imperator Train de Luxe, Europe’s elite boards for a farewell voyage. Owner Leo Goldberg stages a glamorous on-board show and private auction as the train travels from Vienna to Prague via Budapest, selling the Majestic to the highest bidder. But the train is more than a luxury relic: it is a controlled, mobile platform with secure compartments, limited exits, and near-total anonymity. That makes it irresistible to intelligence agencies. A Russian agent under deep cover, MI6 operatives posing as newlyweds, Chinese agents secretly wiring the train for surveillance, and a former special forces officer traveling with his daughter all converge on board. Behind champagne and polite conversation, a covert war unfolds. As the train speeds through the night, the stakes rise, trust erodes, and escape routes disappear.

Sissy (a character Romy Schneider would later popularize in the 50s) is Duke Maximilian of Bavaria's favorite daughter.The gift of a necklace,meant for her, falls into the hands of a crooked circus director.

Elisabeth, a fifty year old woman, visits her old father in the outskirts of Klagenfurt. There, she reflects about her childhood and her romantic life.

When Ella, the rich daughter of a corrupt banker, escapes from her arranged wedding and hides in the trunk of a Bentley,she meets Richie, a small town crook who has just stolen the Bentley. Together they stage her disappearance as a kidnappingin order to get as much money as possible from her parents.

Exodus to Shanghai tells the story of two lovers who have to escape from Vienna to China after Dr. Ho, the Chinese Consul in Vienna in 1938, issued Exit Visas to many Jews against the instruction of his superiors. Fannia, a New York Jewish Violin student, falls in love with the Consul's nephew Bruce. Together they must leave Vienna as the Gestapo is chasing them to get the Jews and Hitler's painting.

Most of the time, Patrick Angerer enjoys a pretty laid back view of life. So he's not especially impressed by the protest action his workmates are taking against the strict wage targets set by the new management of Falkendorf steel plant. But things suddenly begin to get interesting for Patrick when his ex, Barbara Brossman, still the great love of his life, is sent to Falkendorf as the union's lawyer: as she's brought along her new partner, Patrick has his work cut out trying to convince Babs that his life doesn't entirely consist of football and trips down the pub.

Paula Rom and her family live in the suburb of a small city - happily and approved by society. Their average and inconspicuous life changes totally, when her 15 years old son shoots ten of his classmates and kills himself afterwards. From that day nothing is how it used to be. The whole family has to struggle with the anger and sorrow of the people around them. They need to deal with the assassination and the circumstances, how it could come to the disaster out of nowhere.

When the Hungarian Revolution against the Soviets collapses in 1956, two young revolutionaries have to make an impossible decision.