SHORT NEWS

Ulrich Seild's IMPORT EXPORT in competition at Cannes

 

Ulrich Seidl’s 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 reality’s 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 Seidl’s 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 I’m 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. It’s not always certain that that will work when shooting starts. And when there’s 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), Seidl’s 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