Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

A successful and married, although not quite young, stage actress falls for a young man, who is involved with a young actress who uses him to advance her career and upstage the leading lady.

Take a fascinating journey into one of the world's most amazing running events. Over 250,000 people start simultaneously across the globe, united by a common goal: to make spinal cord injury curable.

60 years of the Austrian State Treaty (1955 - 2015). Robert Dornhelm and Gabriele Flossmann search for the current state of the "Austrian soul" in the Second Republic, our free and neutral Austria.

Katja Stern, a successful newspaper editor, is shocked to find that the tensions in her marriage with Erik, a no less successful lawyer, have led to health problems for her 12-year-old son. On the advice of her doctor she drives the boy alone into the mountains. Christopher is getting better, but the family life of Stern is not going well. When Katja meets the farmer Johannes in the mountains and falls in love, she has to make a decision.

In the made-up country of Alanien, King Alexander I has been overthrown while abroad. Now, he's in Vienna with his daughter, the city of his fondest memories since studying there as a boy. It doesn't take long for the charm of Vienna to work its magic on the former king: he quickly comes to terms with the new situation and is able to enjoy the Austrian capital sans all the ceremony and trappings which would otherwise accompany him on a state visit. The princess is content with preparing herself for a career as a pianist concert, while the former king takes a job as a chauffeur in the embassy of the country he once ruled. The revolutionaries are shocked; and his days in Vienna are numbered.

A new collaboration between director Sigi Rothemund (Siggi Götz) and writer Erich Tomek.

The investigation into the death of a young woman who was drugged with knockout drops and raped leads the Graz duo to Leoben.

After 16 years, Sabine travels back to her home village. The occasion is a class reunion. She wants to return to Vienna that very evening. She has only come anyway because things are still not settled between her and her childhood sweetheart Leonhard. The joy of their reunion is overshadowed by the disappearance of his daughter. The events awaken a sense of déjà vu in her. In addition, she learns of the suicide of her former best friend. She directs her suspicions towards her former teacher, the village's great patron, Dr. Körbler. "Körbler loves children", she writes on a note, which she anonymously passes to Leonard. The girl had tutored with Körbler before she disappeared. Sabine obviously has good reason to suspect the seemingly harmless old man.

Out of necessity, Gunther Philipp and his male colleagues put on women's clothes again and cause a commotion in the noble ski resort of Davos as the Jolly Sisters. Their girlfriends don't take kindly to this and counterattack in men's costumes.

On a garbage dump, people try to make a living in the poorest of conditions.

In the heirs, the friendship ends, as is well known - especially if the illegitimate scion of a count is to come unexpectedly to a million-fortune. In a bitter inheritance dispute, Paula Dennstein and Therese Schwarz are the lawyers of the parties to the dispute, who at eye level deliver a sophisticated exchange of blows and outdo each other in bluffing. While the idealistic career starter leaves no stone unturned to help her client to his rights, the lavish legal advocate of the noble family must prevent the family's reputation from getting under the wheels.

More than two years after the sudden death of Michael Glawogger in April 2014, film editor Monika Willi realizes a film out of the film footage produced during 4 months and 19 days of shooting in the Balkans, Italy, Northwest and West Africa. A journey into the world to observe, listen and experience, the eye attentive, courageous and raw. Serendipity is the concept - in shooting as well as in editing the film.

Journalist Will Roczinsky is dead. He was investigating UFO sightings. A TV broadcast summarizes the events up to his death. When broadcast at the time, viewers believed to be watching a documentary instead of a teleplay.

The comedy “Ein fast perfekter Seitensprung” was not only successful, it was really well-done. The first sequel is, as most sequels, less attractive. As the charming mix of Germans and Austrians itself wasn't new and interesting any more, Schwabenitzky had to concentrate more on the less terrific elements. He emphasised the character-clichés and made up a more complex story, in order to bring down as many of the characters from the first film as possible. This sequel is only worth watching if you're a great fan of the first part. Actually, not even then.

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An adolescent boy, who serves the military forces, experiences homosexual feelings towards one of his comrades. The suppressed conflict bubbles up during their last night at the border, socially isolated and armed with loaded weapons.

One of the first epic films made in Austria, as in some of the similar Cecil B De Mille entries, a fusion of a biblical story with a modern update.

A movie theater in the suburbs of Vienna. At the end of the show, a corpse is suddenly sitting in the auditorium. The mysterious tie murderer has struck again. Together with her friend Schorsch - the head waiter of the "Nachtigall" - the cinema owner Hermine wants to get rid of the "business-damaging" corpse inconspicuously. Mutual suspicions begin among the patrons of the restaurant.

Josef "Schmutz" (german for "dirt"), a security guard obsessed with duty and cleanliness, is given the task of guarding a decommissioned industrial plant. While maintaining his devotion to the authority of property right, the self-proclaimed "Representative of Ownership" is himself slowly losing his sense of reality.

A moving coming of age story in a time of extreme change: on August 23, 1944 in a small city in Romanian Transylvania, the 16 year old Felix Goldschmidt awaits his classmates for their traditional Exitus Party (school graduation). However, this very day the kingdom of Romania takes leave of its ally of many years - Nazi Germany - thus ending the 800 year old, highly successful story of ethnic German immigration at the feet of the Carpathian Mountains. It is a great story of young people's blindness to the rise of Fascism, the destruction of bourgeois values, a first love and shattered friendships.

Film ist. 1-6 is an avant-garde collage from Gustav Deutsch, using found footage from various scientific films to explore the properties, impact and nature of film.

Paul and Bernd take over a small upscale antique store together. On one nightly excursion, Bernd introduces Paul and Lisa with each other. What was intended as a little variety to marriage-like everyday life develops into a great romance accompanied by a threat: If Eva hears about the affair, the financing for the shop will be in danger. Slowly but surely, Paul is ready to give up everything for Lisa: the shop, Eva and especially the loan. Bernd knows that Dragan is his only hope.

Puppets! Pixels! Anime! Live action! Stock footage! Lumpennerd Johannes Grenzfurthner gives an ideotaining cinematic revue about important political concepts. Everyone is talking about freedom! Privacy! Identity! Resistance! The Market! The Left! But, yikes, Johannes can't tolerate ignorant and topically abusive comments on the "Internet" anymore! Supported by writer Ishan Raval, in this film, Johannes explains, re-evaluates, and sometimes sacrifices political golden calves of discourse. Not to be used with false consciousness or silicone-based lubricant.

Pepperminta is an anarchist of the imagination. She lives in a futuristic rainbow villa and according to her own rules. Colors are the young woman's best friends and strawberries are her pets. She knows the most amazing remedies to free people of their fears. Pepperminta's wish is for everyone to see the world in her favorite colors. Werwen, a young plump and shy man yet whose sex appeal Pepperminta finds highly attractive, and the beautiful Edna, who talks to tulips, join her on her passionate mission. These three musketeers of a different kind set out to fight for a more humane world. Wherever the gang appears, everything is turned upside down and people's lives are transformed in the most miraculous and wondrous of ways.

Willibald Adrian Metzger is supposed to restore the interior of a dance theater in Graz. But then the lead actress and, shortly thereafter, the understudy of the current production suddenly die. Metzger isn't the only one who finds this strange.

A complicated marriage: She has a tumor, he is gay, both of them are keeping it a secret. When their only daughter moves out, he is ready to come out. But that is not going to happen. He arranges a date for a bizarre role-play and she is spying on him, firmly believing that he is having an affair with a younger woman. The chase is on.

A grumpy valet takes corrective action with mumbling peevishness in the fortunes of his family household count.

After Henny's father loses his job at her ex-fiancee's shipyard because of Henny's affair with Sigi, he begins to panic about how to make a living and tries to find new quarters. His sister, Henny's aunt Marlene, suffers as a result of his chaotic efforts. The path to his new life requires that Henny get married, as the aunt is a strict puritan. But whoever knows Henny can be sure that things will take a few unexpected turns...

When Ovid's “Metamorphoses” meet Vivaldi's music: conceived and directed by Barrie Kosky, an effervescent show presented at the 2025 Salzburg Festival. With Cecilia Bartoli, Lea Desandre, Nadezhda Karyazina, and Philippe Jaroussky, as well as actress Angela Winkler in the spoken role of Orpheus.

When a young man is accused of a crime, his prideful confession resonates in the face of injustice.

Gustl Leubelfing, daughter of the mayor of Nuremberg adores the king of the Swedes. So she happily substitutes her brother as Gustav Adolf's page instead of marrying her fiancée Roland. Of course she has to hide that she's a woman, especially when they go into war against Wallenstein.

Hofreiter, who has a relationship with Natter's wife Adele, confronts Natter after the latter launches a newspaper advertisement linking the suicide of an admirer of Hofreiter's wife to Hofreiter himself. In his tried and tested manner, Hofreiter challenges his vis-a-vis to a duel, but contrary to all etiquette, Natter refuses and exposes Hofreiter's system of vain notions of honor by confronting him with "genuine feeling". Natter: "I am hopelessly in love with my wife. That happens, dear Hofreiter. Nothing helps. That's just the way it is." His revenge is of a different nature, because he gets out of Hofreiter's narcissistic game and disavows his deceptive maneuvers and strategies of shifting blame.

Martin has not worked as a cook since the accidental death of his wife, with whom he ran a restaurant. The single father manages himself and his little daughter Katrin as a taxi driver. When the strict judge Annemarie withdrew his taxi license because of a minor offense, Martin had to hire himself out as Nikolaus at the Christmas market. The picky paragraph rider constantly runs into him. He would love to give her his opinion - instead the spark jumps over. It is well known that love goes through the stomach. But to do this, Martin would finally have to do what he does best: cook.

The antihero "Mr. Karl" tells a "young person", the viewer, his life story while he sits at work in the warehouse of a delicatessen. The narrator increasingly turns out to be an opportunistic follower from the petty-bourgeois milieu, who maneuvered his way through life in the changing course of Austrian history from the end of the First World War to the end of the occupation in the 1950s.

Deeply disappointed by her bridegroom, Andrea flees from Bruggern to the south and experiences a beautiful "Romance in Venice". She falls in love with the boyish-charming pianist Stefan Schröder. But a misunderstanding leads to breakage. Andrea returns pregnant to Germany. Stefan signs a contract for America. And the years go by .

The son of an Argentine chemist travels to Vienna, to solve the murder of his father. Step by step, he realizes that his father was internationally entangled in secret service machinations and chemical weapon sales, and ends up in mortal danger himself. Meanwhile, he also realizes that there is no connection between his father's murderess and those dubious activities. Her motive for killing him goes back much futher, to a court hearing during the Third Reich...

Theodor Guschlbauer conducts the Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera in this lavish staging of Johann Strauss's operetta. Recorded in 1980, the production features some of the leading performers of their day, including Lucia Popp, Edita Gruberova, Bernd Weikl, Walter Berry and Brigitte Fassbaender.

Director Robert Dornhelm casts Bud Cort for alter-ego purposes in She Dances Alone. Cort plays a documentary director, seeking to produce a film on the life of controversial ballet star Vaslav Nijinsky. He finds his goal of objectivity blocked by Nijinsky's elderly real-life daughter Kyra, who is as stocky as her father was sylph-like. Kyra's uncompromising insistence on total control over the project literally shapes (and frequently distorts) the film before our eyes. Adding to the Pirandellian atmosphere of the Australian-produced She Dances Alone is Max Von Sydow, also playing "himself."

An aging renowned art history researcher falls in love with a younger woman who struggles and tries to cover his ongoing Alzheimer's's.

Three seasoned women, successful and in the prime of their years, have had enough of the masters of creation. Maria finally leaves her husband Josef, to whom she led the common starred restaurant in Vienna in spite of his affairs during the marriage. The family judge Steffi wants to find a new beginning after their early retirement, and the pharmacist Carola is tired of being the eternal lover of her married friend. The trio travel from Vienna to Saxony, where Maria inherited a small castle-like estate.

Jakob Kisch loves Impressionist art. Therefore, the coach driver leads a double life as a gentleman robber. However, during his final heist, his heart fails. Only thanks to his cunning does he escape—and the Monet was only a copy anyway. During preventative care at the hospital, he overhears Police Chief Fellinger engaging in corrupt dealings. Kisch's sense of justice is alarmed.

The pretty young seamstress Annie works in the home of the famous Viennese fashion czar Charles Fürst. Hoping to one day win Her Majesty, as Fürst is known, Annie rejects all advances from jazz trumpeter Axel. Her efforts are vindicated when she mistakenly receives an invitation to a royal dinner and is allowed to accompany Charles on a business trip to Paris. But in the city of love, her hopes are abruptly dashed.

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.

Vienna, around 1900. The master baker Streussler’s most ardent wish is to see his daughter Nelly as a student at the university. With the help of his famous “streusel cake” he succeeds in luring all kinds of helpers for this endeavor into his house. But Nelly has entirely different plans: she is in love with the chimney sweep Heinz, the son of a neighbor, with whom Papa Streussler has been fighting for years. So it’s no wonder then, that the grump confectioner is doing everything he can to break up the relationship.

A male body was found floating in Lake Triestach near Lienz in East Tyrol. According to the autopsy, Konrad Kofler, Tyrol's Minister for the Environment, had a relatively low blood alcohol content and apparently drowned. After a meeting with the Ministers of Finance of all federal states, Kofler was on his way to Inner Ainöd, a side valley in East Tyrol, but he never arrived.

Who was Marisa Mell? The personae Marisa Mell and Marlies Theres Moitzi, the famous Graz actress’ real name, are juxtaposed in the documentary Feuerblume several companions, such as Christine Kaufmann, and her friend Erika Pluhar, remember the actress. The film is also an attempt to illuminate and question the role of women in the film business of the 1960s and 1980s from a contemporary gaze and feminist perspective, and against the backdrop of the MeToo movement.

The assassin Pieru, also called "The Flexer", has his next job to do: A guy named "Roy Eastman Codec". But he doesn't want this and the two fight the whole night and the next day. Bit by bit, the client of Pieru gets in the foreground with his "master-plan".

A woman (Maria Emo) cares for her older husband (Hugo Gottschlich) who makes his living smuggling things across the Tyrolian Mountains in this tragic drama. The police know the husband is up to no good but have been unable to catch him in the act. A young policeman (Sieghardt Rupp) is assigned in hopes of cracking the case, and the wife falls in love with the cop. When the husband discovers the two are in love, he picks up a knife and goes to fight the policeman for the woman he loves.

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.

A documentary about Goran Ivandic 'Ipe', the drummer of most popular Yugoslav rock band of all time, Sarajevo-based "Bijelo dugme" (White Button). Ivandic's fatal jump from the balcony of hotel Metropol in Belgrade in 1994 sparked much controversy around his fate.

It is summer and five overly-seasoned college students have been given the task of writing a group paper on Franz Kafka’s “The Country Doctor.” At first they are reluctant, but in a cloud of hashish they come up with the idea to film the story instead. Their film location is a campsite in Sicily, which they had already booked ages ago for summer vacation. The technical department consists of a couple “unique” men from the Vienna film scene. To everyone’s surprise, they even manage to get Kafka himself to play a supporting role in the film.

In this highly symbolic political allegory, Averill is traveling through a troubled countryside amid rumors of war to visit his father. He reaches a train station in a city which is paralyzed by a transportation strike and is forced to take lodgings in a bizarre, unattractive town populated by seemingly malformed individuals. After a while, he begins to try to woo a much older woman, and symbolic images of entrapment, imprisonment and erotic enticement mark his adventures in this regard.

In Alt-Köstendorf in the Salzburg region, the dean, known as Seelenbräu, and the brewer Hochleithner, known in the village as Leibesbräu, are fighting for supremacy. As their nicknames suggest, Leibesbräu is primarily concerned with the physical well-being of the villagers, while Seelenbräu cares deeply about the faith of his congregation. This leads to repeated clashes between the two men, who could perhaps be described as stubborn. When Hochleitner's niece Clementine leaves the convent and wants to stay at home, a new dispute flares up between Seelenbräu and Leibesbräu.