Ulrich Seidls Import Export will receive its world premiere in the competition program of the 60th Cannes International Film Festival (May 16 - 27, 2007)
Synopsis Two stories moving in inverse directions. Olga is a nurse from Ukraine, who seeks to find her luck in the West and ends up
as a cleaning woman in a geriatric ward in Austria. Paul is an unemployed night watchman from Vienna. Looking for work and
a meaning in life he travels east with his step father and winds up in Ukraine. Two young people who are driven to move elsewhere
and start life over and trip up on realitys rough edges. Two stories about the pursuit of happiness and material advantages, about the abysmal side of sexuality and about death...and
about the difficulties of cleaning the teeth of a stuffed fox.
About the production With casting and location scouting having started already in 2004 Ulrich Seidls new film Import Export has been in the works for more than three years. 12 weeks of shooting over a period of almost two years, followed by an intense
editing process makes the production story of Import Export a truely Seidelesque enterprise.
Ulrich Seidl about Import Export From my previous films Im used to spontaneously including real events and have developed my own working style. I wanted
to work on authentic sets - that was extremely important to me. I wanted to make it possible to capture everything that happened
on film, and at the same time tell a story with the actors. Its not always certain that that will work when shooting
starts. And when theres not enough preparation, you lose. I try to walk this tightrope between precise preparation and
being open to the unforeseeable.
About Ulrich Seidl:
Austrian director Ulrich Seidl was born in 1952 and lives in Vienna. Internationally acclaimed for his disturbing documentaries
(Good News, Animal Love, Models, Jesus, You Know) and features (Dog Days won the Grand Jury Award at the Venice Film Festival in 2001), Seidls distinct way of portraying humanity in its most
isolated and intimate moments, has established him as one of today's outstanding and most talked about filmmakers. Werner Herzog named Ulrich Seidl amongst his ten favorite filmmakers: "I have never looked so directly into hell in the cinema."
Import Export a film by Ulrich Seidl Austria 2007, 35 mm, Dolby SR, 136 min
Key cast: Ekateryna Rak, Paul Hofmann, Michael Thomas, Maria Hofstätter, Georg Friedrich, Petra Morzé
Script: Ulrich Seidl, Veronika Franz
Cinematography: Ed Lachmann, WolfgangThaler
Editing: Christof Schertenleib
Production company: Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion
World sales: The Coproduction Office
The production was supported by: Austrian Film Institute, ORF, Vienna Film Fund, Land Niederösterreich
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