Seldom does a film score have such a distinctive character as that of Jessica Hausner's CLUB ZERO. Sometimes it adopts a contrasting position to the European setting of the film, while at others it is self-confidently in the foreground of the action. It is intriguing, touching and surprising. A conversation with Markus Binder, winner of the 2023 European Film Award in the European Original Score category for the film music for CLUB ZERO.

Nach ihrem Portrait des nordkoreanischen Frauenfußball-Dreamteams der frühen 2000-er Jahre (Hana, dul, sed, … 2009) verspürten die Filmemacherin Brigitte Weich und ihre Bildgestalterin Judith Benedikt den Wunsch zu erfahren, wie das Leben ihrer außergewöhnlichen Protagonistinnen nach dem Ende der aktiven Sportkarriere weiterging. In einer flüchtigen Überwindung der Isolation gelingt …NED, TASSOT, YOSSOT … über den Schutzwall der Diktatur hinweg ein unermüdlicher, vielschichtiger Versuch nach Verbundenheit.

Brigitte Weich’s doc sequel …NED, TASSOT, YOSSOT … on the North Korean women’s soccer dream team of the early 2000s is hosted by IDFA, the world's largest documentary film festival (Nov 8 to 19). …NED, TASSOT, YOSSOT … will celebrate its international premiere at the Luminous section.

Also playing in Amsterdam: THE KLEZMER PROJECT by Leandro Koch und Paloma Schachmann, our Berlinale 23 Encounters entry, at Best of Fests.

As a child in the early 1930s, Josef had already discovered his vocation – to be a photographer – and met the love of his life – Ragusa. But the war carries him away and turns him and his camera into witnesses of unimaginable violence. 30 years later, sensations of guilt and longing bring him back to his village, where almost everything has remained the same. Peter Keglevics has chosen a historical context for his film ALL WILL BE REVEALED in order to explore persistently recurring political mechanisms and reflect on a decidedly up-to-date approach to the truth.
 

Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s VERA, starring Vera Gemma, is the Austrian entry to the 2024 Oscar race for Best International Feature Film. Inspired by the life of actress Vera Gemma, the film interweaves the portrait of a glamourous woman with the merciless social realities of a big city.
VERA, winner of the Best Film and Best Actress award at the Venice Orizzonti competition, has so far attended over 50 festivals and garnered more than ten prestigious international and national awards.

When Covid reduced freedom of movement for all of us to a minimum, Nikolaus Geyrhalter captured the state of emergency in Vienna with his camera confronting us with the fragility of our supposed security.

THE STANDSTILL celebrates world premiere as a Documentary Competition contender at DOK Leipzig. Also showing at Leipzig: VISTA MARE by Julia Gutweniger & Florian Kofler in the Audience Competition.

This is real-life slow-motion disaster movie on an epic scale.
A panoramic city symphony filled with somptuous vistas and rich human detail.
 
THE STANDSTILL is a deluxe showreel of Geyrhalter’s harmonious, hypnotic, cool-tempered observational style.
 
An absorbing, exhaustive and often disturbingly beautiful document of recent history.
The Film Verdict on THE STANDSTILL: absorbing, exhaustive and disturbingly beautiful.

The Film Verdict

Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s perspective is the long shot. If something attracts his interest, he takes a cross-border, often world-embracing look at burning issues of global coexistence. When Covid reduced freedom of movement for all of us to a minimum, he captured the state of emergency in Vienna with his camera, and in THE STANDSTILL he confronts us with the fragility of our supposed security.

The 48^th TIFF (September 7 to 17) will host the world premiere of Elisabeth Scharang’s new Film WOODLAND starring Brigitte Hobmeier as Marian who, driven by an inevitable impulse, leaves her city life and returns to her childhood place.
 
WOODLAND, produced by WEGA Film Vienna, is part of the prestigious Centrepiece line-up (previously known as the Contemporary World Cinema program)

Marian leaves the city. Without any thought, without any plans. An irresistible impulse propels her to the countryside. The terrorist attack in Vienna has made everyday life in the city unbearable for her. Twenty years earlier, a similar force had impelled her to leave the village where she grew up, and now this is where she returns. In WOODLAND, Elisabeth Scharang creates a force field of experiences where there is no movement for generations, yet everything can change in a second; her protagonist is brought to a point of absolute zero – which is essential if she is to get her bearings afresh on the past and the future.

The European flag flies proudly, promising respected rights and respectable prosperity. International corporations are currently colouring their image green and feminist. In EUROPA, Sudabeh Mortezai focusses on the vast shadowy areas behind all this. The two sides of Europe clash in an Albanian valley, revealing the price to be paid for success and the direction chosen for the future.

When the first Sarajevo Film Festival took place in October 1995, the near end of the war was not yet in sight. Elma Tataragić has been part of the festival committee since the very beginning. She shared with us her memories of the festival's start in Sarajevo under siege and her thoughts on Austrian filmmaking, to which 29th SFF has dedicated a focus program.

A view of the sea represents a longing – often to recuperate from a whole year of hard work and everyday stress. To provide some people with this brief break on the beach in the sun, others have to work hard all summer. In VISTA MARE, Julia Gutweniger and Florian Kofler have created an essay on visible relaxation and invisible activity, focusing on the landscape of Adriatic tourism, which is operated at full throttle for a few summer weeks every year without much regard for resources.

Supremely audacious and disturbing
Variety
 
A real head-turner of a film
Screen International
 
a film with a cutting humor and a cruelty without name
Le Monde

In her class Miss Novak warns her students against eating without awareness. Every morsel on a fork should be examined closely, every bite considered carefully. At some point, her students reach the stage where they can regard intake of food as a dispensable ballast on their journey to a better world. In CLUB ZERO, Jessica Hausner observes how power creeps up silently, and how faith quietly eats away at reason.