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INTERVIEW
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MURER – ANATOMY OF A TRIAL at Filmfest Munich
Christian Frosch
Christian Frosch has reappraised an outrageous case of post-war jurisdiction in Austria. The Filmfest Munich hosts the Diagonale winner of Best Austrian Film for its international premiere. Read more on MURER – ANATOMY OF A TRIAL in our interview with the director.
SHORT NEWS
La Valetta awards STYX and WELCOME TO SODOM
Wolfgang Fischer’s STYX garners two awards at La Valetta Film Festival, including the prize for Best Performance to Susanne Wolff and Best Cinematography to Benedict Neuenfels. The Best Cinematography award of the documentary competition went to Christian Kermer, DOP of WELCOME TO SODOM.
SHORT NEWS
Austrian films at international festivals
Participations
April - June 2018
SHORT NEWS
Austrian films on international screens
Theatrical releases
October 2016 – June 2018
SHORT NEWS
Peter Brunner returns to Crystal Globe Competition
The 53
rd
Karlovy Vary FF (June 29 to July 7) has unveiled its official program.
Peter Brunner, winner of the Special Jury prize 2015, returns to the Crystal Globe Competition with TO THE NIGHT, his third feature length film and first drama filmed in English, that will celebrate its world premiere in the Czech spa town.
SHORT NEWS
THE GREEN LIE awarded at Cinemambiente
“The film shows us how to be citizens and not consumers and reminds us that to effect change we must fight the battle together”, stated the jury honoring Werner Boote’s THE GREEN LIE with the Arcobaleno Social Cooperative Environment and Society Award of the Turin Cinemambiente festival.
SHORT NEWS
Fipresci Prize to LIFE GUIDANCE
LIFE GUIDANCE by Ruth Mader, screened at the Cluj Napoca Transilvanian Film Festival
wins the Fipresci Prize, offered by the International Federation of Film Critics for a title in the section
To Be or Not to Be Politically Correct?
SHORT NEWS
Best Screenplay award to THE DARK
Justin P. Lange's THE DARK, co-directed and photographed by Klemens Hufnagl wa s awarded for Best Screenplay at the Fantaspoa Fantastic Film Festival at Porto Alegre.
INTERVIEW
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«The central thread running through Justin's stories is abuse.»
A semester spent at Columbia University, where Justin P. Lange was studying directing and Florian Krügel film production, lay the foundation for their creative friendship and their joint feature film debut THE DARK. With the calm, carefully-composed camerawork of Klemens Hufnagl, the film treads the path least taken between the genres as it combines suspense and empathy, zombie-horror and drama.
INTERVIEW
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«We wanted a certain subversive feel.»
Dominik Hartl
When Julia and her friends head to a Croatian party island to celebrate graduating from high school and enjoy life for one carefree summer, Dominik Hartl confronts them with a brutal avenger in the teen slasher movie PARTY HARD, DIE YOUNG, putting a grim and dramatic end to their happy-go-lucky antics.
L’ANIMALE at Sydney’s Europe! Voices of Women in Film
It’s becoming a tradition that the Sydney Film Festival in cooperation with EFP and Screen International as a media partner showcases ten remarkable films of European female directors. Katharina Mückstein’s L’ANIMALE and the German-French-Austrian co-production 3 Days in Quiberon by Emily Atef are to be discovered on the Sydney screens.
SHORT NEWS
Two awards at the Munich DOKfest
I’M A BAD GUY by Susanne Freund is the winner of the VIKTOR DOK.deutsch, for the best German-language documentary. A film, as the jury stated, „that allows us to look into an abyss that could be our own“. The highly topical SAND AND BLOOD by Matthias Krepp & Angelika Spangel bagged the Megaherz Student Award.
SHORT NEWS
THE WALDHEIM WALTZ wins at Play Doc
Ruth Beckermann’s Berlinale winner THE WALDHEIM WALTZ took the main award together with Pablo Sigg’s
Lamaland
(part I). at the 14
th
PLAY DOC festival where both films had celebrated their Spanish premiere.
The film s
ets the Waldheim affair in a bigger international political context, yet 30 years on, it is dauntingly timely”, stated the jury.
SHORT NEWS
Docu/Life Award for SAND AND BLOOD
„
Great cinema is able to unfold the hidden aspects of human life, by projecting light where there are shadows,
“ stated the jury at
the KIEV Human Rights Documentary Film Festival where SAND AND BLOOD by Matthias Krepp and Angelika Spangel stood out in the Docu/Life competition.
CPH:DOX with Austrians vying for Dox: and F:act Award
The 16
th
CPH:DOX screens two Austrian films in their prestigious competition programs: the thought-provoking WELCOME TO SODOM by C. Krönes and F. Weigensamer celebrates its world premiere in the DOX:AWARD main competition. F. Ofner’s and E. Hausberger’s WEAPON OF CHOICE, a gloomy success story of a pistol made in Austria, is selected for F:ACT Award.
SHORT NEWS
THE WALDHEIM WALTZ at Cinéma du réel
Ruth Beckermann’s Berlinale Best Documentary winner WALDHEIM’S WALTZ is part of the international competition of the 40
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Cinema du Réel. Only two years ago, Ruth Beckermann was awarded the Prix de la Scam and a special mention at the Young Award for her previous opus The Dreamed Ones at the Paris based festival.
INTERVIEW
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«In order to understand this non-place, you have to look deeper.»
One of the most poisonous scrapyards on the planet can be found in the middle of Ghana’s capital. Electronic scrap is brought here by the container-load, and the people who recycle it earn a pitiful living, while the air is polluted, the water is poisoned, and the city has been brought to the verge of ecological collapse. In the middle of the garbage, filth and chaos of Agbogbloshie, Christian Krönes and Florian Weigensamer expose a microcosm and the orderly system which governs it in WELCOME TO SODOM, sending an alarming signal to Western consumers.
INTERVIEW
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«There are far more heroes than people think.»
Fernando Romero-Forsthuber
NAMRUD – TROUBLEMAKER is the title Fernando Romero-Forsthuber has chosen for his portrait of Jowan Safadi. And this is not just a reference to the artist’s first solo album. In fact, the Palestinian musician from Haifa is a provocative and multilingual thinker, relentless and unerring in exploring areas of conflict in his society.
INTERVIEW
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«A film about the Glock and not against the Glock.»
Fritz Ofner, Eva Hausberger
Whether on the right or the wrong side of the law, in military conflicts or for personal defense, the fame of the Glock pistol knows no bounds. On the American private firearms market it registers over a million sales each year, while in the music scene there it is rare to see a brand name used so often as a synonym for the object in question. But in Austria itself people know little about the international success story of this weapon made in Austria. Now Fritz Ofner and Eva Hausberger plan to change that with the documentary WEAPON OF CHOICE.
SHORT NEWS
THE THIRD OPTION awarded at Bergamo
Thomas Fürhapter's THE THIRD OPTION, a documentary critically examining our concepts of normality and disability garners the Best Documentry Prize of the Visti da Vicino-Section at the 36
th
Bergamo Film Meeting. The award assigned by the festival audience is to honor the independent filmmaking.
Best Berlinale Documentary THE WALDHEIM WALTZ
Ruth Beckermann wins the GLASHÜTTE ORIGINAL – DOCUMENTARY AWARD selected out of 18 nominated films from the different Berlinale programmes, endowed with € 50,000. Wolfgang Fischer’s STYX took three awards including the EUROPA CINEMAS BERLINALE LABEL, the Prize of the ECUMENICAL JURY for the films screened at the Panorama and the HEINER CAROW Prize.
SHORT NEWS
Panorama Audience Award with Austrian runner-ups
Austrian directors Wolfgang Fischer (STYX) and Katharina Mückstein (L’ANIMALE) came in second and third in the race for the Panorama audience trophy.
Clear, impassioned but never polemical
... that’s what
Variety
stated about Ruth Beckermann’s astute revisiting of the 1986 Waldheim affair that lead to the collapse of Austria’s comforting narrative of being the first nazi victim. Read more about the Austrians on the Berlinale screens.
SHORT NEWS
Austrian films at the 68
th
Berlinale
Ruth Beckermann, Katharina Mückstein, Ludwig Wüst, Werner Boote and three more co-productions add up to an outstanding Austrian presence at the Berlinale 2018: Forum with THE WALDHEIM WALTZ by R. Beckermann and DEPARTURE by L. Wüst. Panorama Special with L’ANIMALE by K.Mückstein, Culinary Cinema presents W. Boote’s THE GREEN LIE.
INTERVIEW
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«I see the Waldheim affair as a conflict of generations»
Ruth Beckermann
Kurt Waldheim’s lapse of memory was the beginning of a process which saw the Austrian narrative – that the country was the first victim of National Socialism – eventually eroded. His campaign for the 1986 presidential election polarised the country. Ruth Beckermann, an activist at the time, has now edited Austrian and international archive material for THE WALDHEIM WALTZ to create a film which, revisits the conflicts in collective and individual memory.
INTERVIEW
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«An alliance between reason and sensitivity.»
Katharina Mückstein
Mati is about to leave high school, on the verge of unlimited opportunities: unpredictable perspectives in the city or the security of the countryside? Female identity or male role models? Listen to her inner voice or follow the expectations of others? Katharina Mückstein's second feature film, L’ANIMALE, exposes life as a intermediate area which floats between certainties, social constraints and lust for freedom, while again and again throwing up new options to seize and risks to take.
INTERVIEW
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«I move around in a painting.»
Ludwig Wüst
In Ludwig Wüst’s DEPARTURE two strangers reach a tacit understanding to journey together for a time, which leads them to a radical turning point.
INTERVIEW
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«Producing goods in an unfair way which harms the environment has to be forbidden. »
Werner Boote
In THE GREEN LIE Werner Boote not only demonstrates how major companies use huge advertising budgets to make their images “greener” so they can continue unabated to destroy resources and the environment; he also makes the conscious point that sustainable climatic and environmental protection can only be achieved by political means and not just by more aware behaviour on the part of consumers.
INTERVIEW
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«A spotlight on the dynamics between us brothers»
Stefan Bohun
After their second-oldest brother committed suicide, Stefan Bohun and his brothers embarked upon a journey together – first, to discover more about depression and the pharmaceutical treatment available to combat it, but increasingly in an attempt to find out more about their relationship with one another, and about the brother missing from the group now… And to laugh and weep at the places that had been so significant to him, as a means of saying farewell. An interview with Stefan Bohun (director) and David Bohun (producer).
SHORT NEWS
Mumbai top award to ARE YOU SLEEPING, BROTHER JAKOB?
The 15
th
Mumbai international film festival awards Stefan Bohun’s moving essay about grief and brotherhood with the Golden Conch for best documentary film.“A wakeup call to notice the things unsaid,” stated the jury.
SHORT NEWS
COPS sets off with 4 awards
Amazing take-off for Istvan's feature debut COPS: after its world premiere at the festival Max Ophüls Prize and immediate follow-up at the FIPA Biarritz, COPS garners Audience Award, Best Young Actor Award for a secondary role and the award for the socially relevant film at Saarbrücken and, to top it all, the main prize FIPA d'OR at Biarritz .
INTERVIEW
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«There is a spiral in operation
.
»
Stefan A. Lukacs (aka Istvan)
Lack of experience leads a young recruit in an elite police unit to provoke an escalation which proves fatal. A failure – or an act of heroism? Some of his colleagues see it one way, some the other. In his directorial debut COPS Istvan reveals the complexity of a police system which does not permit any weakness, and he explores the narrow dividing line between seeking out confrontation and passing it by.
SHORT NEWS
Three Austrian films vying for Max Ophüls Prize
The main competition line-ups of the 39
th
Max Ophüls Prizefestival at Saarbrücken include three Austrian world premiers:
COPS by Istvan,
SORCERER by Sebastian Brauneis and
Stefan Bohun’s documentary ARE YOU SLEEPING, BROTHER JAKOB?
INTERVIEW
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«The only limitations to her life that she accepts are the ones she sets herself.»
Ruth Kaaserer
What began for Ruth Kaaserer as a meeting with an elderly woman in a male-dominated competitive sport turned into an encounter with a fascinating individual who perceives her life as an adventure. A respectful interplay between proximity and distance has given rise to GWENDOLYN, the portrait of a woman with endless facets and contrasts.
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«Today he’d be a must-have accessory.»
Markus Schleinzer
Markus Schleinzer, Palme d’or contender in 2011 with his directorial debut
Michael
, has finished shooting his second feature
Angelo
. A film about Angelo Soliman (1721–1796), who, abducted from Africa as a small boy, made his way into Viennese society. An enigmatic biography that inspired the filmmaker to shed some light on the idea of home and identity from a historical point of view.
