An Austrian musician in the 90s who dreamed of being signed by a major label actually did stand a chance, because scouts were even roaming even the provinces in search of talent. When a record deal from London beckoned, Helen followed the lure of international success, leaving more than just the other members of her band behind in the village on the Danube where she grew up. In Evi Romen's HAPPYLAND, a woman in her 40s returns home with no money or glamour left, somehow lost between reality, desires that were pursued and opportunities that were missed.

CPH:DOX-reviews on Arash T. Riahi's & Verena Soltiz' GIRLS & GODS:

This is a film that is going to sting a lot of people.
Unseen Films

An enriching conversation about feminism and religion.
La Estatuilla

CPH:DOX-reviews on Natalie Halla's THE LAST AMBASSADOR:

a testament to resilience.
Overly Honest Reviews

an edifying film that measures the battles fought and, above all, the road ahead.
Le Polyester

Women who demand freedom and religions that know how to prevent it are the two forces pulling against each other in GIRLS & GODS. The feminist activist Inna Shevchenko travels to various cities in search of points of view - from believers and non-believers, from women who quietly reform their religion from within and those who raise their voices to challenge it and, most of all from those who who have put everything on the line for their position. Dialogue instead of dogma is the fundamental tone of this attempt to sharpen the focus on plurality as the only vector for social change.
We talked with Inna Shevchenko, Arash T. Riahi and Verena Soltiz

When the Taliban seized power on August 15, 2021, the Afghan Embassy in Vienna had a prestigious location on Vienna's Ringstrasse, with a dedicated Ambassador in Manizha Bakhtiari. While her function was rendered ambiguous on that day, her critical attitude towards the new rulers has never wavered. Natalie Halla was impressed by this courageous stance and wanted to create an account of the weeks of transition. In fact, it turned into a long-term documentary, THE LAST AMBASSADOR, because three and a half years later, her protagonist is still clinging on to her position and using it to appeal to the world about the shocking situation of women in her country.
 

For Anna, the signs indicate that changes are coming. She’s twelve years old, starting at a new school, discovering new opportunities – and also their price. WHEN YOU'RE AFRAID, YOU PUT YOUR HEART INTO YOUR MOUTH AND SMILE is both the title and the agenda. Because in the world of Marie Luise Lehner's feature film debut, social conditions are the way we know them but at the same time a little different, a little gentler, a little more relaxed and more open to adopting an unusual perspective on things.

Marie Luise Lehner and her wonderful actors presented IF YOU ARE AFRAID YOU PUT YOUR HEART INTO YOUR MOUTH AND SMILE at the Berlinale Forum.


« A wonderfully light-hearted mother-daughter and coming-of-age story with true-to-life characters that inspiringly demonstrates how we can connect with each other more easily.»
filmkritik.de

As a student in the 1970s, Nathalie Borgers' husband Abidin was involved in the flourishing Turkish democracy movement – and also experienced its suppression. Scars on his body still bear witnesses to a personal and political turning point. The military coup in 1980 forced him to make a new start in Vienna, which gave rise to a break with the past while also forging an unbroken connection. In SCARS OF A PUTSCH, the filmmaker tries to get to the bottom of the mystery that Abidin contains within himself by tracing a movement of social awakening and the powerful forces opposing it.

Golden Bear contender MOTHER'S BABY by Johanna Moder celebrated its world premiere in the magnificent Berlinale Palast. These are some of the rave reviews:

meticulously calibrated in its emotional complexity
Screen Daily

a work of gesture and suggestion
Variety

juicy, disturbing and slashed with dark humor
The Hollywood Reporter

Julia would appear to have achieved it all by the age of 40: artistic success, a gratifying relationship, a chic home. However, to attain perfection as a woman she still needs one more thing – at least, according to the world around her: to be a mother. Julia decides to take the plunge… and experiences alienation and disillusionment during and after giving birth. In MOTHER'S BABY, Johanna Moder dares to question and demystify the taboo of society's promise that motherhood brings only fulfilment.

Florian Pochlatko's HOW TO BE NORMAL AND THE ODDNESS OF THE OTHER WORLD premiered at Berlinale Perspectives and enchanted the critics:

a breezily disturbing and disturbingly breezy comedy-drama
Screen Daily

a decidedly stylized rendering of a world teetering on the edge of chaos.
The Hollywood Reporter

Is there anything left that passes for normality in today's reality? And if so, who is qualified to say what is normal? Or to put the question at a more fundamental level: does something like reality even exist? In his first feature film HOW TO BE NORMAL AND THE ODDNESS OF THE OTHER WORLD, Florian Pochlatko simply dismantles the boundaries of the levels of perception. He takes the thoughts of his protagonist Pia, who is trying to reconnect with the outside world after a stay in a psychiatric hospital, and creates a profound kaleidoscope packed with wit and references, against the backdrop of a crumbling world.

Nathalie Borgers and her team presented SCARS OF A PUTSCH at the Forum Special focus Open Wounds, Open Words.

Nathalie Borgers has  given us a harsh and painful, but also at times poetic and moving story.
Cinema Austriaco

WELCOME HOME by Andreas Prochaska opened the Berlinale Panorama and garnered fantastic  reviews. Read some of them

A visually stunning plunge into the hidden depths of a foreign homeland.
The Hollywood Reporter

Andreas Prochaska delivers a hypnotic atmosphere and a gripping central performance from Julia Franz Richter.
Screen Daily

this intense psychological thriller is a dam burst.
The Spot

Judith didn't grow up with her parents – and she could never really work out why. She has a good life in Berlin, so when she inherits her late father's house in Austria, she just wants to dispose of the property as quickly as possible. But the moment she steps inside the impressive building, she begins to be sucked down into buried memories, and before long she’s cornered by an entire village. With this gripping plunge into deep-seated fears, Andreas Prochaska's psychological thriller WELCOME HOME BABY depicts the clash of old and new orders and a blow that brings liberation.
 

This is our wonderful 2025 line-up
Competition
MOTHER'S BABY by Johanna Moder
Perspectives
HOW TO BE NORMAL AND THE ODDNESS OF THE OTHER WORLD by Florian Pochlatko
Panorama – Opening Film
WELCOME HOME BABY by Andreas Prochaska
Forum
IF YOU ARE AFRAID YOU PUT YOUR HEART INTO YOUR MOUTH AND SMILE by Marie Luise Lehner
Forum Special
SCARS OF A PUTSCH by Nathalie Borgers

It certainly establishes Makarova’s position as a promising talent to watch.
Screen Daily
 
Makarova’s elegant, psychologically complex Cold War drama plumbs the inner dislocation of exile.
The Film Verdict
 
A brilliant sophomore feature
Filmuforia

Many of Perla's actions can be understood. Not all of them, though. She is an artist and a mother, she loves two men and has rebelled against a regime; when she makes a decision, it is based on her gut feeling – and most of all, it is her own decision. In her second feature film, PERLA, Alexandra Makarová has created a powerful and ambivalent character who takes us back to the times of the Iron Curtain and reminds us of the worlds separated only by a shallow little river on the Austrian border, and the ways of life it managed to prevent and destroy.

The filmmaker Olga Kosanović was born in Austria, where she has always lived. She only left for vacations and – like many young Europeans – to study abroad. But when she applied for Austrian citizenship, the authorities calculated that she’d spent two months too long out of the country. She was stunned to discover that she didn’t belong in the land she had always called home. Her feature film debut FAR FROM BEING LIPIZZANS records with considerable humour the bureaucratic process of naturalization and reflects on the factual and fictional elements involved in determining where someone belongs.

THE DEVIL'S BATH depicts 18th century life in the countryside: a cold, harsh existence marked by hardship which is reflected in the few colours and materials of people’s garments. Tanja Hausner's costume art begins in this simplicity, finding the essence of her figures in the finest nuances and a wide range of fabrics, interweaving past and present to create a subtle dialogue between the forbidding nature and the painterly intensity of the images. A conversation with Tanja Hausner, who was awarded the European Excellence Award 2024 in European Costume Design for this work.

The city of Agadez in northern Niger has a complex history; the upheaval it has experienced in recent years is simply dramatic. While tourism declined long ago as a source of income, the city of the Tuareg then flourished as a hub of sub-Saharan migration – until a virtual border established in the Sahara at the behest of the EU cut off the city's main source of income. Gerald Igor Hauzenberger and Gabriela Schild, the directors of ON THE BORDER, have paid repeated visits to Agadez, accompanying committed Tuareg and watching as a city which had always maintained links to its nomadic tradition became, within a relatively short period and for the most contradictory motives, a plaything of geopolitical interests.

Lucerne in Switzerland will be hosting the 37th European Film Awards ceremony on December 7, 2024: Austrian costume designer Tanja Hausner will receive the European Excellence Award for her outstanding work in THE DEVIL’S BATH by Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala. And we keep our fingers crossed for Kurdwin Ayub’s MOON, nominated for European University Award.

The German title, DER SOLDAT MONIKA makes it clear immediately: someone here is both she and he. And that’s not all: in existential and political issues too, Monika Donner appears to take opposing positions. The filmmaker Paul Poet has been working for four years on a portrait of the former Defence Ministry official and military strategist, the anarchist and individualist, left-wing queer and right-wing Covid activist Monika Donner. In an attempt to do justice to a personality full of facets and contradictions, he has created a wild collage which also reflects a period of irrationality and declining rigor in the media and politics.

Long before the Beirut blast in August 2020, they had established a deeply-rooted connection to Lebanon: Nicola von Leffern and Jakob Carl Sauer waited several months after the gigantic explosion before they moved to the country. They wanted to get an idea, initially without a camera and later with one, of what such a traumatic event can do to a society already battered by crises. They spent three years accompanying several protagonists in their attempts at individual healing, completing TO CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SEE FIRE at precisely a time when the people of Lebanon are once again being plunged into a daily frenzy of destruction.

Pittu, a traditional game where the aim is to knock down and quickly rebuild a wobbly tower made of seven stones, comes to represent the rare but carefree encounters between Happy and his nine-year-old daughter. But the old Indian game also stands for his situation in life as an asylum seeker in Vienna. Because even though he’s been in Austria for ten years now, he never knows whether what has been built up today may not collapse again tomorrow. In HAPPY, Sandeep Kumar takes a look at the invisible existences of a city where life seems so simple.