Who should you save if you can’t be sure any longer what good it would do? The three crew members of the Rubikon space station know that the ecological disaster on Earth can’t be avoided. But when a tiny glimmer of hope emerges the three individuals, whose characters and motives for venturing into outer space could hardly be more different, find themselves in an impossible dilemma. Leni Laurisch has embarked upon a tricky mission with her sci-fi debut RUBIKON and staged a spacey chamber piece about survival.

Being young could feel easier. From the family's winery and the forgetful grandfather to her role as captain of the ice hockey team, 20-year-old Mira has quite a lot of duty in her life. But there’s also the fear of not being equal to the expectations placed upon her, and grief for lost members of her family. In Clara Stern's debut BREAKING THE ICE it takes Mira a long time to see that although the ice is always hard when she slams against it despite her armour, it can thaw very quickly.

Two Austrian directorial debuts are celebrating their world premiere at the Tribeca Festival 2022 (June 8 to 19): Clara Stern's BREAKING THE ICE in Viewpoints and Peter Hengl's FAMILY DINNER in Midnight:

inaugurating the start of a promising career.
Cineuropa on BREAKING THE ICE

Another moody and unsettling Austrian chiller
indiewire on FAMILY DINNER

When Simone arrives at the country cottage owned by her Aunt Claudia, the famous nutrition expert, she doesn’t exactly get a hearty welcome. The overweight teenager had been hoping to lose a few kilos over the Easter holidays, with Claudie’s expert guidance. But getting that sort of help from Claudia entails vows of renunciation and devotion, and there’s no escaping from the pact. Peter Hengl lets his debut horror feature film FAMILY DINNER simmer on a slow heat before serving up a truly gruesome banquet.

Jasmila Žbanić' harrowing drama based on the tragedy of Srebrenica in July 1995 is the winner of the 2022 LUX European Audience Film Award. QUO VADIS, AIDA?  – a European co-production including nine countries – was co-produced by Vienna-based coop99 filmprodution with a major financial and creative input from Austria. Cannes-winner GREAT FREEDOM by Sebastian Meise was also among the three films selected for the final run of the LUX audience Award.

Marie Kreutzer and her terrific leading actress Vicky Krieps have set Cannes abuzz. Vicky Krieps wins the Un Certain Regard BEST PERFORMANCE Prize for her outstanding work in the role Elisabeth from Austria in Marie Kreutzer’s CORSAGE. The filmwas also awarded for Best Creative Sound Design.

Un Certain Regard:
CORSAGE by Marie Kreutzer.
May 20 | 11:00 | Debussy

Producers on the Move:
JOHANNES SCHUBERT
May 19 – 23

Marché du Film – Frontières:
REQUIEM FOR A ROBOT by Chris Rainer
Proof of Concept on May 21

Some historical sources put the figure at 45 cm. Apparently a tape measure would only have to be that long to completely encompass the waist of the Habsburg Empress Elizabeth. However, if the legendary beauty had difficulty breathing at the imperial court in Vienna it was due not only to her extremely tight-laced corset but also to the attitudes and conventions which permitted the Emperor’s wife no other function than to be a beautiful appendage at his side. Marie Kreutzer focuses on Elisabeth’s 40th birthday as a turning point which prompts her to withdraw gradually from this suffocating confinement. In CORSAGE she creates a portrait of a woman whose potential goes far beyond the limitations of the period.

The demands placed upon the Costume Department of CORSAGE were twofold in nature. Alongside the task of creating the gowns worn by Elisabeth and her entourage they also faced the perhaps greater challenge of creating efficient and wearable corsets to go underneath the fine material, to reproduce the astonishing waist measurements of the Habsburg empress. Interesting insights provided by Costume Designer Monika Buttinger.

We’re so thrilled that Marie Kreutzer’s film is part of the prestigious Cannes Sélection Officielle and celebrates its world premiere at Un Certain Regard. CORSAGE, starring Vicky Krieps in the role of Austrian empress Elisabeth, was produced by Austrian Film AG in co-production with Samsa Film (LUX), Komplizen Film (D) and Kazak Productions (F). International sales are handled by: MK2

We are pleased that Austrian documentary film is present at DOK Munich this year in all its rich diversity: SECOND THOUGHTS FIRST by Marko Doringer celebrates its world premiere at DOK:panorama, ALICE SCHWARZER by Sabine Derflinger and LIVING TOGETHER by Thomas Fürhapter their international premieres in DOK.Deutsch. Also screening: ALPENLAND by Robert Schabus (Münchner Premieren), FOR THE MANY by Constantin Wulff (Best of Fests) and SOLDAT AHMET by Jannis Lenz (DOK.international).

Great news from NYC: Two Austrian directorial debuts will enter the festival scene at the Tribeca Film Festival (June 8 to 19): BREAKING THE ICE by Clara Stern in Viewpoints, Peter Hengl’s FAMILY DINNER has been selected a Midnight entry.

Two out of three films selected for the LUX Audience Award 2022 are Austrian co-productions: GREAT FREEDOM by Sebastian Meise and QUO VADIS, AIDA by Jasmila Žbanić. The prize established by the European Parliament as a sign for its commitment to culture is an international audience award. Film lovers from all over Europe are invited until May 25 to vote for their favourite.
 

We’re full of pride and joy: Kurdwin Ayub’s directorial debut SONNE wins the GFF Best First Feature Award. This films stands out among 18 first features selected throughout the different Berlinale sections, the prize is endowed with € 50,000.
Ruth Beckermann is once again a Berlinale laureate. The winner of the Berlinale Documentary Award 2018,  takes the Best Film Award at the Encounters competition for her new documentary MUTZENBACHER.

Richie Bravo has certainly enjoyed more glamorous times. Today he appears in small venues in the Italian seaside resort of Rimini during the winter, attempting to preserve something from the best days of his life as a singer of schlager, German easy-listening, sentimental pop songs. He is a restless spirit, constantly in motion, always a few steps ahead of himself, until suddenly the daughter he had almost forgotten appears in front of him. In RIMINI Ulrich Seidl presents a loose family group through three generations, evoking a sensation of time passing and transformations to the beat of middle-of-the-road sentimentality.
 

Five Austrian Films celebrated their worldpremiere, respectively in the Golden Bear competition, the Encounters competition and the Forum: RIMINI by Ulrich Seidl, SONNE by Kurdwin Ayub, MUTZENBACHER by Ruth Beckermann, A LITTLE LOVE PACKAGE by Gastón Solnicki, FOR THE MANY by Constantin Wulff.

Directors and teams met the audience in cinemas and earned remarkable reviews by the international press. We've got an overview on this website

Kurdwin Ayub's vibrant feature is plugged directly into the modern Viennese diaspora, attempting to reframe the adolescent Muslim experience. Read the whole review by Nikki Baughan of Screen Daily on Ulrich Seidl-produced SONNE, the feature debut by Kurdwin Ayub released at the Berlinale Encounters competition

Renowned Austrian documentarian Ruth Beckermann digs out one of the more scandalous literary works from her native country (or indeed any country) from the last century and checks it off against contemporary moral(ism)s, writes Cineuropa-critic Jan Lumholdt in his review on Ruth Beckermanns Berlinale Encounters-entry MUTZENBACHER.

For Seidl’s film, a shiveringly precise slow burn that continues to burrow new tunnels in the mind long after it ends, no such renewal is in the cards. In RIMINI low season can always get lower. Read more of Variety-critic Jessica Kiang’s remarkable thoughts on Ulrich Seidl’s Golden Bear contender RIMINI or Peter Bradshaw’s 4-star-review in The Guardian.

... Their desperation, their anger is written on their faces, and the camera never flinches.(...) Yet Wulff never exploits these moment. These people are the heroes, the ones that made the step of asking for help and standing up for their legal rights. Find the whole version of Susanne Gottlieb's profound review on Cineuropa.

The two Austrian documentary entries at the 72nd Berlinale – MUTZENBACHER by Ruth Beckermann (Encounters) and FOR THE MANY – THE VIENNA CHAMBER OF LABOUR by Constantin Wulff (Forum) are among the 18 documentaries selected across all sections for the prestigious documentary award. With her prior documentary WALDHEIM’S WALTZ Ruth Beckermann won the Berlinale Documentary Award already in 2018.

The novel Josefine Mutzenbacher[i], ostensibly a female perspective but in fact most probably a male fantasy from a less radiant fin de siècle Vienna, was first published anonymously in 1906 and banned until the 1960s. Today it has lost none of its ambivalent nature. In her film essay MUTZENBACHER Ruth Beckermann takes the opportunity to invite men of various ages to perch on a pink casting couch and engage in an exchange of ideas on sexuality and taboo, inspired by passages in the outlawed classic dating back over a century.

How are you supposed to belong anywhere if you are born in one country and grow up in another, if one culture is dominant in the family and another at school? If a particular look is all the rage on digital channels this week but a different one next week, and if you record a video with girlfriends that goes viral only to discover that this suddenly drives a wedge between you? In her feature film debut SUN Kurdwin Ayub follows three 17-year-olds through the chaos of our time.

The Chamber of Labour is a unique feature of Austrian life. Financed by contributions from the workforce, this independent institution has been representing workers’ rights and interests for the last 100 years. Constantin Wulff has dedicated his new documentary film FOR THE MANY to the Viennese headquarters of this organisation.

Gastón Solnicki has a particular faible for Vienna, its sounds and its layers. In the first images of A LITTLE LOVE PACKAGE he has captured for posterity the last hours when it was still permitted to enjoy a cigarette with one’s melange in a Viennese café. And in a city where the vanished past never entirely dissolves, the Argentinian filmmaker begins his story together with two women, one of whom intends to settle in Vienna. Just as the search for an apartment in Vienna develops into an associative voyage, A LITTLE LOVE PACKAGE becomes an essay on remaining and passing by.
 

Max Ophüls Prize for Best Feature Film and Best Screenplay as well as the Prize of the ecumenical jury. That's the awesome outcome for C.B. Yi's feature debut MONEYBOYS at the 43^rd Max Ophüls Prize festival Saarbrücken. "MONEYBOYS is an existential, queer and at the same time universal film about love."

We are looking back upon a festival year which can, all in all, fairly be described as hybrid; after the first six months of festivals reinventing themselves in various combinations of online and on-site events, we were treated to a pleasant sense of normality in the summer and autumn, with major festivals again welcoming audiences. A feeling which, it turned out, ought never to have been entirely trusted. All of which makes us even more delighted to be able to present an impressive report of the voyage through 2021.
 

A single location dominates Ruth Mader’s new film SERVIAM – I WILL SERVE: a Catholic girls’ boarding school for the daughters of wealthy families. The film is set in the 1980s, and money seems to count more than faith in this atmosphere, where girls-only schools were as natural a part of life as landline phones. One of the sisters takes her mission seriously and attempts to guide her pupils on a spiritual path – not necessarily to the benefit of their mental state. Ruth Mader filmed her thriller in association with epo-film during the 2021 summer vacation and has now begun postproduction work.