Discoveries from Austria World Cinema

Heli Putz is a climber, alpinist and adventurer. He takes us on a journey to freedom. He meets up with friends and companions in the mountains.

Early Curtiz feature

Neonazis, women´s groups, sects, skinheads, punks, the Pope and different groups of the society produce an apocalyptic szenario in a disastrous football match.

A door opens, a cone of light falls into the room, then darkness again. As the door opens a second time, this time from the inside, two people slip out who had apparently retreated into the room - for a moment of undisturbed intimacy?

The day came to a lonesome night / It lasted for such a short time / Does it stop / Love lasts or it doesn't / "Tu veux ou tu veux pas"

Since we never managed to meet up for coffee in person, we decided to get so close on stage that we could even cross paths. We'll mostly sit down the whole time. A firework of punchlines—whenever we can think of any. Nostalgic memories—whenever we can think of any. Philosophical thoughts—when we can think of any. And if we can't think of anything, we'll just tell you what comes to mind... An evening from the Globe Vienna.

The residents of a Viennese truck-stop and a nearby camping-ground share a common need: Resting and relaxing in between traveling. Be it vacation or because of work, the visitors take their private spaces with them. The everyday rituals performed at the rest stop, tell stories about the personalities and situations of those who make these small spaces their home for the night.

In the world of industrial chemistry, the way business is done has long encouraged more consumption rather than less. Chemical Leasing explores a smarter alternative: a service-based model where chemical suppliers are paid for the results they deliver — not for the volume of chemicals sold. Instead of selling barrels of product, suppliers take responsibility for the entire process — from application and optimisation to recycling and safe disposal. The film follows this shift through real pilot projects in Egypt, Mexico, and Russia, where companies in powder coating, nickel plating, and wastewater treatment achieved measurable reductions in chemical use while improving efficiency and cutting costs. Produced by UNIDO in 2006, the documentary combines practical case studies and animations to illustrate how aligning economic incentives with environmental responsibility can create better outcomes for industry and the planet.

While those around him react to his decision to join the military with comments and war stories, A. is looking for another reality. He shaves his head, drops out of university, neglects his friends and hobbies. What remains real and what is fiction?

ADGIN PRRX is an anagram of Grand Prix, the title of John Frankenheimer's monumental car racing film, which Norbert Pfaffenbichler has remounted here into a strictly metrical and deeply personal meditation on the nature of time, the thrill of speed, and the melancholy of creeping deceleration, standstill, and death.

A young policewoman working in an emergency call center receives a terrifying call: a school is being targeted by an armed assailant. A race against time begins.

An anonymous amateur film, random product of the ‘grand’ history from the point of view of the middle class. The family’s camera captures Adolf Hitler at Westeinfahrt in Vienna on the oocasion of the Anschluss of Austria. Afterwards: People gardening, smoking and being kind.

In desperation, a hungry man orders a pizza that seems to be out of this world. A feast of the extraterrestrial kind.

She is a phone operator, he is a cab driver. In the evening they meet again in their shared apartment to read comics and have sex. He watches football on TV, she has a bath. Indecisively they try out other possibilities, gestures, stylings. The preparations for breakfast are a routine of well-coordinated motions. In just 18 minutes the film takes a lot of time to show the course of events in their duration and repetition.

Two friends, impatient thugs and betting debts, the tobacco store at the corner; a toy gun. High stakes, if you ask me. Where's the coke, anyway?

Eddie, a 65-year-old man from Sudan, seems to have been living for countless days on a remote stone-covered Swedish island. Surrounded by screaming birds and carrying a silent past, Eddie wanders around in nature, recollecting moments with a broken video camera. Accompanied by Jan, a ghostly hermit living deep in the forest, Eddie penetrates an otherwise hostile environment that is oblivious to his isolation. ​Despite his circumstances, Eddie looks for the miraculous in the overlooked present time.

Compilation of two shorts also distributed independently: Cricket und Reifenspiel [Croquet and the Arc and Hook Game], and Springschnur und Amazonen [Jump Roping and the Amazons]. In a sunny day, on a lawn in the woods, three nude, young brunettes with little flower arrangements on their hair are playing a succession of three dexterity games: throwing and catching three arcs with the use of a thin long hook, jumping the rope (soon replaced by a long piece of light cloth), and using the arcs as hoops for a bit of croquet with appropriate mallets and balls.

David and Sarah's young marriage begins to falter when Sarah starts an affair with one of her husband's colleagues. But while he waits for her at home and plots his revenge, he must learn that some things are better left undesired.

Silvie, 24, begins to turn to ChatGPT for advice more and more often in everyday and emotional crises. What starts out as practical help develops into a relationship of trust between human and machine, raising questions about understanding and dependence.

The film examines Vienna as a global espionage hub, exploring historical and modern intelligence cases like the Wirecard scandal. Expert insights, involved parties, and reenactments, it shows Vienna's pivotal role in the world of espionage

An insight into the outdoor activities at the Viennese Gänsehäufl outdoor pool.

Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave stuck like a knife in the heart of Europe. Camera in hand, the filmmaker retraces his grandfather’s steps. As he strolls along, one encounter follows another, fragments of lives suspended in the shadow of war and censorship.

Documentary film about the Romans in Upper Pannonia.

The film "The Happiness of Others," is engaged in the happy hunting of man in the mental state of happiness. Be happy - and every second of their lives - is the goal of human existence. Welch various ways are there of her, this "feeling of indescribable joy" for a few brief moments by capturing and feel it to be able to show this film. Using a variety of colorful portraits and interviews with successful people, he takes the phenomenon of "Happiness" critical eye.

Austria, 1945. Together with her young granddaughter, Grandmother lives in a lonely hut in the mountains, where one day she is surprised by two Soviet deserters and confronted with her prejudices against them.

Police officer Martin encounters his ex-girlfriend Eva in a bar. Their initial small talk quickly turns serious, and the protagonist's search becomes clear: But he won't find an answer there or with his current girlfriend. In the glow of the neon lights, he drives angrily through the lonely winter night. After narrowly escaping an accident, he ends up in a brothel. But reality soon catches up with him again.

Bands of the image network wrap and overlay elements in the landscape, decomposing them into a structure of panels, cut-outs and colours. Artworks in open space are transposed into systems of image and sound elements, and wandering through the place becomes an adventure through the bends of bird's eye perspectives, light compositions and 3D scans of objects protruding from uneven surfaces.

Elvis dreams of an alternative reality in which previously strict gender norms are mocked and his queer desires are eventually fulfilled—a détournement of the white playboy stereotype in the Elvis movies.

At the age of 53, Michael moves back into his childhood bedroom, after his mother has been diagnosed with earl onset dementia. Can the photographer, who suffers from depression, rise to the challenges posed by this living arrangement?

This experiment on the theme of difference and repetition combines methods used in structural films and elements of narrative cinema. The content was supplied by Robert Frank´s film "OK End Here" (USA 1963). Moments from the life of a herosexual couple were arranged in series on the basis of an alphanumeric editing concept.

Prolific documentarian Jan Soldat (For Fuck’s Sake, Christian, We’re Making a Porn Film) brings another very special, adults-only, sex-positive cinematic experience with this close-up character study of the eponymous Paul -an ordinary-seeming middle-aged man in his city-center apartment. This gentle, lovely fellow talks frankly about his life, work, and family in a simple, deep, and honest conversation. Empathetic humanism at its most direct.

The director and her partner visit his hometown, a small village in Austria.

Whoever wants to die goes to the Grimmelstein. But Naomi is the only one there all by herself - she is desperately looking for her boyfriend Max. Her calls go unanswered, her screams are swallowed up by the fog, Max is nowhere to be found. Didn't they want to do it together? Naomi slowly begins to doubt whether love is really stronger than death.

What are the unheard and unseen messages in online meetings? The documentary explores the vast influence of digital media and its technological exploitation on everyday spatial home office situations. A monolog by an artificial voice becomes the protagonist in and endless loop of information.

"Stone-White Man" is an epic documentary in compact form which tells the life story of Viennese artist Richard Erdoes. Erdoes has chronicled the lives and resistance of Native Americans in the United States since the 1950s.

This documentary road movie features the international jazz big band Vienna Art Orchestra on its tour trough Europe and Canada. A search for the truth of surviving and working in today's cultural world. The musical program of Vienna Art Orchestra's 20th Anniversary Tour under the direction of Mathias Rüegg is entitled "An Echo from Europe - From Django Reinhardt to Django Bates" and is intended as an homage to European jazz composers.

An Asiatic confrontation with a noddle.

Some people only become visible once they have disappeared. Deleted files. Their shadows become more real than they ever were themselves. A computer thriller.

A farmer makes a deal with the Nazis.

Reality in Mozambique resembles an unreal nightmare: South Africa refuses to accept the autonomy and independence of this country. More often than not, children are the victims of this situation. Not because they are killed but because they are made into instruments of death. Children in Mozambique are abducted by the Contras and forced to act as murderers of their own people. Their traumatic experiences (abduction, torture, being trained to kill, flight or liberation) and the efforts of the Mozambique government to reintegrate them into society form the basis of this film.

A grand, absurd drama: The crew of a confiscated cruise ship is forced to spend seven years in a foreign harbor. Left to their own designs by a bankrupt company and ignored by the Ukrainian authorities, the sailors on the Odessa come to terms with their fate in the Bay of Naples.

In 1897, Arctic explorer Robert Peary, commissioned by Franz Boas, curator of the American Museum of Natural History, brought indigenous inhabitants of Greenland back from his expedition. It was a sensation. But only little Minik survived. The rest of his group died within a few months. Minik's father died of tuberculosis; his skeleton was added to the museum's anthropological collection. Minik, adopted by museum staff, remained in America for another twelve years before returning to Greenland. But there he had become a stranger. Robert Peary, on the other hand, was celebrated in America for his North Pole expeditions. Minik could not let go of his past, so he returned to the US.