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Meanwhile, in Graz…
And here we are! Just a few days before the start of a project like “Cinema Austriaco”, we – enthusiastic and surely also a bit excited – are going to take part at one of the most important festivals in Austria: the Diagonale 2019.
The festival, which will take place for the 22nd consecutive year in the picturesque Graz, is one of the most comprehensive and varied festivals focusing exclusively on Austrian cinema and will take place from 19 to 24 March 2019.
After opening with Marie Kreutzer’s The Ground beneath my Feet (already in competition at the 69th Berlinale), there are interesting collateral sections, with meetings, debates and analyses, alongside films produced exclusively in 2018 and 2019.
Within the rich official selection, particular expectations are being raised by films such as Markus Schleinzer’s Angelo, Sara Fattahi’s highly topical Chaos, the successful 2018 horror The Dark, directed by Justin P. Lange and Klemens Hufnagl, The Children of the Dead (also present in Berlin), Peter Brunner’s To the Night and the mini-series M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (a Vienna-set remake of Fritz Lang’s masterpiece M), just to name a few.
And yet, as can be seen from the wide variety of sections present, contemporary cinema is not the only one to be taken into consideration at the Diagonale 2019. And so, next to personal sections dedicated to the great actor Hanno Pöschl or to the director Ludwig Wüst, there is also a small but precious film dedicated exclusively to the world of youth – but absolutely enjoyable also for the older ones – that is The three Postal Robbers, a successful TV feature from 1998, by Andreas Prochaska.
Not enough for a film festival? Not at all. In fact, it doesn’t end there and, in this regard, we must mention a very interesting section dedicated exclusively to the cinema of the past and the masterpieces that have made the history of Austrian cinema, including one of the milestones in the film’s history: The Ancestress (Die Ahnfrau) directed in 1919 by Austrian film pioneers Louise Kholm-Fleck and Jakob Fleck, Willi Forst’s Maskerade (1934) and, last but not least, Models, directed in 1998 by Ulrich Seidl.
In other words, six days of pure full immersion in a cinema that has much, much to offer and a Diagonale 2019 that promises to be full of good surprises.
Of course, if one could attend every single screening of the festival, the situation would be ideal. If one had the gift of ubiquity…
Below are the films presented at the Diagonale 2019.
