Illness, healing and health care systems have preoccupied the filmmaker and science journalist Kurt Langbein for decades. In 2012, he shared his account of being successfully treated for cancer in the TV documentary Miracle Healing. Now, in his highly personal feature documentary DYING FOR BEGINNERS, he explains that the illness has returned and depicts his showdown with mortality. In the context of today's high-tech medicine, he also appeals for a view of life that again accepts death as part of being human. 

It is not only on the actual election day that the contest to achieve power is marked by unpredictability. When Harald Friedl finished the first days of filming, his protagonist Andreas Babler was neither at the helm of Austria’s Social Democratic Party nor Vice-Chancellor of the Republic. Initially, the film was intended to focus on him as a political grassroots worker and mayor, but in June 2023 he became party leader, to everyone’s surprise, and was immediately faced with a general election. THE RACE accompanies a lone candidate and his team in the relentless pace of an election campaign, where the outcome is primarily dependent on the merciless media battle between content and effect. 

The pandemic didn’t just bring our everyday lives and social relationships to a near standstill—it also reduced the possibilities of documenting the world to almost zero. Filmmaker Juri Rechinsky found a solution: no crew, no director of photography, just a body cam mounted on the upper bodies of a wide variety of people, opening up an unfiltered view of their reality. Together with Mario Hainzl, he spent several years creating a PORTRAIT OF NOWNESS, edited from hundreds of hours of raw footage, which allows audiences to slip into the immediate perspective of the protagonists across contexts and continents.

This is our wonderful outcome at the 76th Berlinale:
Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance to ROSE protagonist Sandra Hüller
photo: © berlinale

Giuseppe Becce Award + Special Mention for Prize of the Guild of German Arthouse Cinemas to THE LONELIEST MAN IN TOWN

Label Europa Cinemas + 2nd Place – Panorama Audience Award (feature film) to FOUR MINUS THREE.

Congrats to the directors, producers and their teams!

Six Austrian world premieres by Markus Schleinzer, Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel, Ulrike Ottinger, Ruth Beckermann, Adrian Goiginger and Sebastian Brameshuber.

«The Loneliest Man in Town creates a unique vibe.»
The Hollywood Reporter

«There is charm and tenderness here in abundance.»
Screen Daily

«A droll delight from Austria»
The Film Verdict

 «a trailblazing queer hero»
The Hollywood Reporter

«ROSE’s linear elegance and delicate craft collaborate with Hüller’s riveting work.»

Variety

«Sandra Hüller is phenomenal»
Screen Daily

«A hilarious Isabelle Huppert fully puts the vamp into vampire.» 
Variety 

«Genre subversion and visual extravagance have always been Ottinger specialities.»
Screen Daily

«A visually ravishing movie»
indiewire

«a fresh and nuanced view of a country whose uniqueness is still poorly understood.»
Screen Daily

«True to Beckermann’s desire to meaningfully and thoughtfully engage with society and culture»
The Film Verdict

«An original documentary that confirms the curiosity of a filmmaker with a particularly eclectic body of work.»
Le Polyester

«a moving portrayal of grappling through life after a great loss.»
International Cinephile Society

«A solid Euro drama, extremely well-executed.»
Journey into Cinema

«a devastating drama on loss, grief and letting go»
Cineuropa

«One of the year’s most insightful and thoughtful works.»
International Cinephile Society

«An intelligent and absorbing film with a thrilling sting in its tail.»
Filmuforia

«He has captured the special feeling of informal closeness between strangers so aptly that you feel like driving off right away with Bobby.»
taz

It dawned on Rose at an early age that if you want to lead an independent life, with access to education and property, you would do well to be a man – or at least, to wear pants. In the century of the Thirty Years' War, this young woman chooses the path of disguise and has considerable success. She doesn’t realize until it’s too late that the village will demand a high price from her for this "betrayal" of their community. As meticulous as a historical novel, as timely as a sharp-eyed look at the present, Markus Schleinzer's ROSE speaks to us of fundamental inequality, of the courage to attain freedom and of the ever-present walls that society erects to exclude those who are different.

The most powerful bond in Al’s life would seem to be with Vienna. He lives in the apartment where he grew up, in the city he has never left. But his music comes from somewhere else entirely. The guitarist has internalized the blues rhythms of the Mississippi Delta as if he had absorbed them there. His beloved Viennese home is bursting with nostalgia and memories – of his best years, of his great love. But these days there’s no place on the Viennese housing market for dreamers like him. Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel's THE LONELIEST MAN IN TOWN is a homage to the spirit of resistance and the determination to reject compromise.

Vampires have descended on Vienna with nefarious intent. Eager criminologists, vampirologists and psychologists soon gather at the scene, determined to avert a disaster. They seem unlikely to succeed. Ulrike Ottinger's ironic venture into the vampire genre, THE BLOOD COUNTESS, has its roots in an extended journey from Berlin to Vienna. The bizarre and gruesome places she discovered on the way provide the visually impressive backdrop for a satirical exploration of the city’s dark depths and the unfathomable power of evil.

In Ethiopia, the filmmaker comes to realize, everything is different. Not just the calendar; even a classic hotel like the Hilton in the capital has an unusually strong identity. The legendary Emperor Haile Selassie, as a striking figure in the media during her childhood, along with Ryszard Kapuściński's successful book The Emperor, as a view of the mechanism of power he inspired, provided the impetus for the film essay WAX & GOLD. In it, Ruth Beckermann reflects on the relativity of our (historical) knowledge and on shifts in the perception of the world order, both her own and those outside. 

Heli, Barbara and their two children are a happy family. Not only because the parents both earn their living as clowns, but also because these four people are good for each other. The extent to which Barbara's life is ruptured when her three loved ones die in a car accident is scarcely conceivable. FOUR MINUS THREE is based on a real stroke of fate. To convey the force involved tangibly, step by step, Adrian Goiginger entwines Barbara's life before and after, thus creating space for both the pain and her determination to make a new start. 

Highways are regarded as unsightly corridors to be left behind as soon as possible, simply the means to reach a desired destination. The Vienna/Salzburg route has become part of everyday life for Bobby since he started paying regular visits to a friend in hospital. Strangers accompany him on the long journey, chatting, philosophizing or remaining silent. But Austria’s West Autobahn was also the country’s first arterial road to the west, routed by the Nazis through beautiful landscape and completed after the war. In Sebastian Brameshuber’s chamber piece LONDON, personal stories of the present resonate with history while conveying quiet concern for the future.

The Earth has become uninhabitable for humankind. There had been warnings: the scientists make clear statements about dwindling biodiversity, climate change and, above all, the fatal monopoly position of mega-corporations. In her science fiction scenario HUNGRY, Susanne Brandstätter interweaves an endangered present on the sound level and visual imagery of a desolate future without people, and this hybrid view on the state of the planet makes the urgency visible and the first signs of action tangible

Still in balance. Off balance. Back in balance. Many elements of our ecosystems are on a knife edge, and future scenarios are bleak. Othmar Schmiderer's attention is devoted to the forces opposing this development. ELEMENTS OF(F) BALANCE explores organisms of resilience, strategies of repair and, above all, the symbiotic connections which have always been employed by nature to ensure its continued existence in a "spirit of we", thus providing a forward-looking model for human interaction with the planet."

Packed to the brim with people and possessions, the Fiat 126 containing Jola Wieczorek and her family crossed the Austrian border in March 1989 after driving from Poland. The Iron Curtain dividing East and West was still theoretically in place, but the political situation had eased to such an extent that Poles no longer needed a visa to travel abroad. Austria became the new home of the Wieczoreks. DAYS YET UNKNOWN is a very personal look into the past, when the young family left home behind and embarked upon a "better" future, which turned out to be an existence somewhere “in between”. 

The 55th Rotterdam Film Festival has published its 2026 program. We're delightetd to highlight two Austrian films selected for the Harbour section
World premiere 
HUNGRY by Susanne Brandstätter
International premiere
ELEMENTS OF(F) BALANCE by Othmar Schmiderer