A review of 2008, the year of the Oscar, the most prestigious award that a film can receive; 22 Austrian productions and coproductions that premiered at international festivals, and 40 awards that honored the Austrian film brand.

One of the constants of Austrian film is its diversity. Manifestations of its formal and narrative wealth however are the source of a few surprises and new and unexpected successes each year. While the results from festivals in 2008 were slightly better than average compared to the past, last year was made exceptional by other high points: Stefan Ruzowitzky’s The Counterfeiters Oscar win for Best Foreign-Language Film was the greatest success in the history of Austrian cinema, and Austrian moviegoers took new notice of domestic productions as a result.
Thanks to the box-office figures for The Counterfeiters (176,800), Falco (153,622), Let’s Make MONEY (125,114) and North Face (80,181)?the latter have been in theaters for just a few weeks?last year’s modest market share nearly tripled.

The first significant festival in 2008 was Berlin, where Götz Spielmann was hailed by international critics for his Revanche in Panorama Special, receiving no less than three awards. Coproductions such as Heart of Fire by Luigi Falorni, in competition; Stefan Arsenijevic’s Love and Other Crimes, in Panorama; and Heinz Emigholz’s Loos Ornamental, in the Forum, made for a solid Austrian presence at one of the year’s most important festival platforms.

Three Austrian films were screened at Locarno, and two of them – North Face and Dead in 3 Days 2 – were at the Piazza Grande; March, the first fiction film by Händl Klaus, won a Leopard for Best First Feature. Arash T. Riahi’s first fiction film, For a Moment Freedom, premiered at Montréal, receiving the first of 11 international awards. Revanche was part of the exclusive selection at Telluride and Toronto, and premieres of Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s 7915 KM and Thomas Woschitz’s Universalove, also in Toronto, made for an interesting and full festival summer. The last premiere of the year was at IDFA Amsterdam, which screened Erwin Wagenhofer’s Let’s Make MONEY, and it also featured a retrospective dedicated to Nikolaus Geyrhalter and invited him to program the Carte Blanche series.

In all, 39 films received 292 invitations, and 22 of them premiered in 2008. One Oscar and 39 festival awards were given to 14 different works, thereby demonstrating the high degree of quality and breadth of the spectrum that are the reasons for Austrian film’s international reputation.

The premieres:
Franz Fuchs –  Ein Patriot  (Biarritz, FIPA )
Worldrevolution (Rotterdam)
Heart of Fire   (Berlin/competition)
Love and Other Crimes (Berlin/ Panorama)
Revanche (Berlin/ Panorama)
Loos Ornamental (Berlin/Forum)
Mozart in China (Montréal/Festival International du film pour enfants)
Midsummer Madness (Sofia)
A Road to Mecca  – The Journey of Muhammad Asad
Into the World  (Nyon/Visions du Réel)
Falco – Quit Living on Dreams! (Schwerin)
Back to Africa  (Munich/Filmfest)
Nuits d'Arabie (Karlovy Vary)
Dead in 3 Days 2 (Locarno/Piazza Grande)
March (Locarno/competition),
North Face (Locarno/Piazza Grande)
For a Moment Freedom (Montréal/WWF)
7915 KM (Toronto/IFF)
Universalove (Toronto/IFF)
Flyers (São Paulo)
(Half) The Tim eof my Life (Hof)
Let's Make MONEY (Amsterdam/IDFA)

The awards (selection):
Revanche (Europa Cinema Label Award/Berlin Panorama)
The Counterfeiters (Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film)
March (Leopard for Best First Feature/Locarno, Special Jury Award/Sarajevo)
For A Moment Freedom (Golden Zenith/Montréal, Best First Fiction Feature/Zurich) Mozart in China (Golden Kite/Buenos Aires, Nueva Mirada)
Into the World (3sat documentary film award/Duisburg)
Franz Fuchs – ein Patriot (FIPA d’argent)

And now a look ahead at the busy film year of 2009:
There will be new works by Wolfgang Murnberger (The Bone Man), Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon ), Benjamin Heisenberg (The Robber), Ulrich Seidl (Im Keller), Jessica Hausner (Lourdes), Tizza Covi&Rainer Frimmel (La Pivellina), Michael Glawogger (Contact High, Kill Daddy Good Night), Jasmila Žbanic (Memory Full)