First world premieres at Rotterdam and Saarbrücken: PARABELLUM by Lukas V. Rinner is a contender for Tiger Award 2015, DREAMS REWIRED by Martin Reinhart, Thomas Tode and Manu Luksch selected for Signals: Regained and Georg Tiller's WHITE COAL for Bright Future at the Rotterdam FF. Andrina Mračnikar’s MA FOLIE and Thomas Woschitz’ BAD LUCK will run for the Max Ophüls Prize 2015.

 

44th  International Filmfestival Rotterdam

 

Hivos Tiger Awards Competition

 

PARABELLUM

directed by Lukas Valenta Rinner (Nabis Filmgroup (A), 2M Cine (ARG), La pobladora Cine (UYU))


Hernán arrives with a group of strangers at an isolated house in the Delta of Tigre, a labyrinth of small islands surrounded by streams and rivers. Amongst housewives, professionals and an elderly tennis instructor, they undergo a training regime, apparently in preparation for the end of the world.

with: Pablo Seijo, Martin Shanly, Eva Bianco
 

Signals: Regained

DREAMS REWIRED
directed by Martin Reinhart, Thomas Tode, Manu Luksch (AMOUR FOU Vienna (A), Bildschön Filmproduktion (D))

The film relates the departure into a new world, sparked by the medial triumph over death via machines of sound and vision. Technological and social utopias from 1880 onward supply the thrust of this journey through time. Looking back through a telescope at the future’s past, we discover breathtaking avantgarde film experiments and visionary technological fantasies, inspired by the rapid progress of their time, that are still formative for their radicalism and modernity today.

 

Bright Future

 

WHITE COAL

directed by Georg Tiller (Subobscura Films (A))

WHITE COAL is less a film about coal, although it uses the material as its source of investigation, than an exploration into motifs  of industrial films from the 1920s to the present. Loosely inspired by Hermann Melville's The Confidence Men, a story about a blind messenger aboard a Mississippi steamboat, one thread of the film follows a crew of workers on a Polish coal ship. A second thread portrays the architechture and circumstances of coal burning at the world's largest coal burning power plant, located in Taychung, Taiwan.

 

36^th  Max Ophüls Preis Festival SAARBRÜCKEN

 

COMPETITION Fiction Films

MA FOLIE  directed by  Andrina Mračnikar (Extrafilm (A), Witcraft Szenario (A))

Hanna loves Yann and the lettres filmées he sends her. Yann loves Hanna but mistrusts her. He leaves her but does not leave her alone. His lettres filmées become a threat and Hanna does not know whom she can trust and whether she can still trust herself. Ma Folie starts as an ‘amour fou’ but step by step turns out to be a psychological thriller dealing with different ways of perception, trust and mistrust, imagination and delusion.

with: Alice Dwyer, Sabin Tambrea, Gerti Drassl, Oliver Rosskopf

BAD LUCK directed by Thomas Woschitz (KGP Kranzelbinder Gabriele Production (A))
Three car crashes. Three days. Three interwoven stories. Dagmar works at a petrol station ans has debts. The betting shop employee Lippo is fired by his strange friend Rizzo happen upon a large amount of money and are driven to senseless actions. BAD LUCK is a tragicomic film about wrong decisions, chance and the search for happiness.

with: Valerie Pachner, Markus Schwärzer, Christian Zankl, Thomas Oraze

 

COMPETITION Documentary Films

ATTENTION – A LIFE IN EXTREMES directed by Sascha Köllnreitner (AdriAlpe Media)

ATTENTION – A LIFE IN EXTREMES is based on the stories of three extraordinary sportsmen. provides an unusual perspective on the conditions and forms of expression that define our modern society. We follow wingsuit flyer Halvor Angvik, apnoe freediver Guillaume Néry and ultra cyclist Gerhard Gulewicz in their ambitious struggle to reach the top in their field in the sports world.

 

SAARBRÜCKENER PREMIEREN

THE  PHOTOGRAPHER IN FRONT OF THE CAMERA directed by Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel (Vento Film)

The film accompanies the photographer Erich Lessing. He is 88 years old, but far from retired. The film shows him in his profession, as a member of the managing board of the photografic cooperative Magnum Photos, at tumultous family meetings, in his daily routine at his studio with his co-workers.

 

THE LAST DANCE directed by Houchang Allahyari (Houchang Allahyari Filmproduktion)

One morning police storm into the house where Karl lives with his mother to arrest the young man. Whatever the charge is, it seems to be something nobody has the slightest understanding of. Months before: Karl is working in a hospital. He is fascinated by a strong-willed old lady. A friendship develops with this patient which becomes more and more romantic. One night the two of them get closer, closer than allowed.