Wicked Games Rimini Sparta, through the story of three people, immediately becomes a picture of the era in which we live, of a sick world in which everyone seems to be hopelessly alone, destined never to find the longed-for serenity. At the Diagonale’23.
In Hotel Rock’n’Roll one never knows what to expect, and alongside amusing misunderstandings, clumsy policemen, “impossible loves” and speed cameras ready to treacherously take photographs, there is always time for an evening with old and new friends, singing and drinking merrily.
Meticulously detailed and quite original in its costumes, with an excellent cast and locations that almost seem to belong to enchanted dimensions, Frauke Finsterwalder’s Sisi & I is definitely the most “feminist” version of all the feature films dedicated to Elisabeth of Austria. At the Berlinale 2023.
My Best Enemy is a feature film with an international scope, which draws heavily on mainstream US cinema. World War II and the Holocaust are recounted in Austria in an important film, in which, alongside the story of the two friends/enemies and the dramatic war, there is also a great homage to the art world and to beauty.
A strong inner conflict is the real focus of Sparta. Ewald laughs when he plays with the children. Slowly, however, his laughter turns into a cry. A cry that nobody notices, that only vents inside a car or in the retirement home where his father is. Subtle facial expressions say more than a thousand words. Ulrich Seidl (and the excellent Georg Friedrich) render all this perfectly and show us how the protagonist is actually the only real victim of his own weaknesses. At the Viennale 2022.
The Whore’s Son is the story of a desperate mother-son relationship. A continuous chasing after each other without ever actually meeting. A love-hate relationship that can often lead to the most extreme solutions.
With Rimini, Ulrich Seidl once again gives us a merciless portrait of the world in which we live, in which no one is given a chance to save themselves, in which there is no hope for a better future, in which old songs from World War II still echo through the corridors of a shabby retirement home and act as a sad leitmotif in our lives.
There is no need for much dialogue in Great Freedom. Likewise, the music is minimal but significant. What stands out is, first and foremost, a desperate need for love, conveyed to the audience through simple gestures and a well-composed and never excessive direction. At the Viennale 2021.
It is based on a real-life news story 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. In the film – which is divided into five chapters, each concerning a particular day – everything takes place from October 12 to December 23, 1993. Everything leads up to a single event in which all the characters will be involved in one way or another. But how important is the human being in this feature film by Michael Haneke?
Narcissus and Goldmund is a film that, despite the undoubted mastery of director Stefan Ruzowitzky, despite the high budget employed and a respectable cast, despite visually and symbolically powerful moments, is overall excessively contrived and pretentious.