Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

Kren frames the image to suggest a proscenium, with a view to the harbor that conveys a literal sense of “tele-vision”. The static framing of the image and the clearly stratified mise-en-scène can hardly provoke interpretation. The sight of the girls does so all the more. Kren, the gentle voyeur - who turns the viewer into a secret accomplice - observes three teenagers, and probably like them, awaits a rendezvous. (Thomas Trummer)

The second film adaption of the legendary monolog by Helmut Qualtinger and Carl Merz.

Imagine a sprawling city of 155,000 retirees, equipped with 54 golf courses, 70 swimming pools, and its own media outlet. The thousands of residents of The Villages, Florida, live isolated from the world in a leisure bubble where age is no longer a question. But all of this comes at a cost, paid by the flora, fauna, and locals.

A leather jacket and eyes blackened with make-up. Tommy is a musician with heart, having long outlived his idol, Kurt Cobain. Like him, though, he is also self-destructive and is drawn increasingly into a musical mania and alcohol excess. For the dream of a record contract, promised to the winner of local band contest, he will go to any lengths. The driven individual stops for no one – be it others or himself.

Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds - a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism.

There are elements of Eurotrash in this outdoor Aix-en-Provence summer opera production. Nevertheless, the splendid singing and acting transform the story, normally treated as farce, into something considerably more serious. As many other critics have noted, the young lovers have not yet sorted everything out as this performance ends. Act One begins with the principal characters running around in the outdoor theater -- while the audience takes it in as if they had been advised to sit back and enjoy the novelty. Very likely they were also asked to refrain from applauding at the end of arias and ensemble pieces, in which the three-hour opera abounds.

Based on Gluck's masterpiece and performed entirely on location in and around the environs of the Baroque Theatre at the Cesky Krumlov Castle in the Czech Republic; it's an opera production designed specifically for the film with outstanding sets and production values. Countertenor Bejun Mehta sings the role of the torn main character and acts as an artistic advisor, making for an involving and impeccably performed opera.

Peter Kern developed his film from a critic's remark, "Please stop making films." When his alter ego, Peter Gläubiger, meets a critic he unloads all the built-up desire for revenge on her. And vice versa, she is also looking for revenge too - on meaningless art.

In the experimental short film PART TIME HEROES film artists Mara Mattuschka and Chris Haring stage a ballet of vanities with retro flair. The search for fame elevator goes up and down and egos bust and boom. Each character is isolated in an anachronistic, film-star dressing room, left alone, subjected to sinister fittings. The golden room with the greatest striptease talent who constantly undresses yet is never naked... The film checks these beings, isolated through their hero competition, into the lonely heart hotel where they eavesdrop on one another through thin walls.

The document explores Leonard Bernstein's various facets as a conductor, a composer, a pianist and most of all a teacher and how he influenced so many people. It includes interviews of his children, former conductor students, orchestra members, collabrators and other acquintanses. - Pascal Kay

Car Love explores the car as a fetish object, blending Marx's commodity fetishism with Freud's sexual theory. It depicts a profound, intimate connection between human and machine, emphasized through BDSM scenes, transcending physicality.

A young woman finds herself in a difficult situation with her family when she is caught between their expectations and her desires.

Walter is a somewhat church-weary, washed-up exorcist who prefers to spend his free time sipping beer. His tranquil life changes when he suspects he's encountered a vampire. Disorganized, he attempts to track him down and confront him—who else would do it? The centuries-old, sinister Blood Prince, on the other hand, pompous and self-absorbed, is enthusiastic about the new world he's encountered and helpless in the face of its technological and social advancements. Times of open hostility are interspersed with moments of rapprochement, but it soon becomes clear: Vienna isn't big enough for both. A vampire film that juggles the genre's trappings with a wink, charmingly sidestepping all conventions as an entertaining comedy. Sometimes by force.

New Year's Concert 2020

In this end-of-the-life scenario, which is designed as an expressive silent film with subtitles, a group of adolescents and scattered loners move through a destroyed landscape. One of the leaders is poisoned by his girlfriend, who now takes his place and demonstrates her power to a newcomer. However, he in turn passes the test of courage, puts himself in the place of the head of the group and leads the ever-growing community into an uncertain future.

A moonstruck comedy about lovers and robbers.

Young police officer Christopher has recently become a member of an Austrian special unit, known as WEGA. One of his first assignments is to accompany the deportation of Kofi, a young man from Gambia, who is due to be returned to his home country.

Postwoman Liesl is a hobby detective investigating the village of Öd, a town with a population of just a thousand. While attempting to deliver a package to a woman from Schamberg, she finds her dead in bed. According to the village doctor, Barbara, her best friend, the cause of death was a heart attack. This explanation is also sufficient for the new post commander, Magnus Tröger, and the case is closed. When he transferred to Öd, he had hoped to have peace and quiet.

At the Natural History Museum in Vienna, everything that is found on earth and in outer space and that humans can get their hands on, is collected, archived, and studied in the name of evolutionary research. Archiv der Zukunft captures the aesthetic appeal of the natural-history collection and its working process, illuminating the mammoth project of knowledge preservation and production hidden behind the building’s imperial façade.

Humans are analogue. We're literally sick of the digital world engulfing us. People are yearning for real things and authenticity. IMPOSSIBLE is sensuous and inspiring film about the revenge of analog. And the eccentric, crazy Austrian scientist, who saved the world's last Polaroid factory - just when Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone. An entertaining underdog story of a very modern Don Quixote, shot on 35mm. And a sumptuous invitation to fall in love with real things again.

Small-town gangsters and ambitious young girls meet in "Dreamland", where they exchange nervous kisses and green banknotes.

Follow-up film to „Seine Tochter ist der Peter“: It’s a story about a lawyer, who is in love with his colleague, and a couple hot to divorce, who are represented by both lawyers, who, as a result, have a fall out with each other. But everything will be set right by little Elisabeth, known as “Peter”.

In dystopian Germany - just a breath away from our current reality - the return of the wolf triggers a mysterious fascination among the citizens. When journalist Leo Bernstein sets out to investigate, he gets drawn into a long-forgotten fairy tale that places him in great danger.

Documentary about Mikhael T. Kalashnikov, inventior of the AK-47 assault rifle. The story of a tragic hero whose name will be synonymous with struggle and terrorism forever.

Stage performance by the Theater in der Josefstadt.

Against a green-screen backdrop, a group of children and adults ask themselves questions about their gender. In a natural space freed from normativity, the possibilities of rewriting the scripts of their lives become infinite. Acclaimed director Manuel Abramovich and his performers invite us into a dazzling new reality of desires and possible futures.

Daniel commits his entire spare time to the search for aliens. For years he has been trying to contact aliens - without success until today. Also his latest experiment seems to fail - but surprisingly something strange happens.

Michael Niavarani is constantly late, he says, and constantly pressed for time. Someone else should organize his books—like Thomas Mraz, who appears with him on stage in "Encyclopaedia Niavaranica." They organize Niavarani alphabetically.

The life of a young woman caught between a routine, not necessarily dreary everyday life with a child and a seemingly exciting job at the VIP counter at the airport.

Aderlaß is a youthful attempt to process the inheritance of the Vienna Actionists through the use of a super 8 camera. In front of the camera is a performance from Armin Schmickl Sebastiano (Peter Tcherkassky). A game with light and sound that explodes out of the calm into a delirium of movement and finally returns, after the "blood-letting", to rigidity. (Irene Judmayer)

In order to impress a socially superior woman with money, an unsuccessful insurance agent commits sophisticated fraud: he concludes contracts with fictitious people and collects the insurance sums after their "death". However, his first fictional persona is his downfall.

South Tyrol, 1961: Paul was hoping to escape the confines of his village and study painting. But because his older brother Anton is a wanted terrorist, he’s forced to stay at the farm and help Anton’s wife, Anna, and their son. As Paul is drawn into a vortex of violence and toxic masculinity, Anna struggles with the radicalization of her husband and the patriarchal structures in place at the time.

In the worst crisis of his life, widower Franz Schuster finds out he has cancer and definitively gives up. Neither is his daughter able to get through to him. In hospital, he gets to know retired doctor Peter Arndt, who tries to show him the right way. At the lowest point of his life, Schuster gets to know and love Erika Frecher. Together they attempt to master their lives, and it is not the length of time, but the manner in which they will live, which opens up their avenue of hope.

In 1924, British climber George Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine attempted to conquer Everest for the third time. They never returned. Could they have been the first to successfully climb the mountain before meeting their deaths? In 1999, German geologist Jochen Hemmleb discovered Mallory's body just below the summit, reigniting speculation. In 2010, he organized a new expedition to follow up on this sensational discovery. His goal: to find the base camp from which Mallory and Irvine set out to conquer the summit.

Sam Murphy and Jack Fenton find an old message in a bottle that shipwrecked threw into the water 100 years ago. Out of curiosity, they look for the island and are surprised to meet people here. Love confusion quickly occurs, and Fenton and Murphy want to leave the island with their friends. But they have the bill without the jealous fiancé Douglas and certainly not with Pat and Patachon who are on the island police, fire brigade and musicians in one person...

A dark and sensuous film from a landfill in Ghana, where electronic waste from the West is being recycled. An unforgettable experience, told by the workers themselves.

A condensed omnibus of all twelve chapters of Film ist. by Gustav Deutsch. Chapters 1-6 consists almost exclusively, of sequences from existing scientific films, while chapters 7-12 is a collection of moving pictures from the first thirty years of a medium which was then still silent.

The true life story and adventures of László Almásy, the 'English patient', who crossed Africa in 1929 with the father of filmmaker Kurt Mayer: These events provide the motivation and outline for a critical journey through 'men's domains' in Cairo, London and Vienna. Navigation in the expanses of the memory - the dream of flying, documents from the war and of an unrequited love...

A found footage film about rituals, festive occasions and a married couple in a seeming frenzy of cosy togetherness. We see the pair pouring drinks, cutting cakes, making toast. Finally the exuberant movement of the dancing woman freezes.