In Paradise: Love we find all the constants of Ulrich Seidl’s cinema in a deeply intelligent, painful and merciless work. The cynicism and hypocrisy of human beings, the difference between social classes, but also – and above all – a deep loneliness and a desperate need for love are the absolute protagonists. Can there ever be an even faint chance of salvation? The director seems to have no doubt about it.
The colours of Greece, together with breathtaking landscapes, are treated in Griechenland almost as co-protagonists. Johannes runs from one side of the island to the other in order to understand what is really going on. But, perhaps, only a chat with a fisherman, while stargazing at night, can make one really understand the true meaning of life.
First Snow of Summer, while suffering from excessive rhetoric and scarce originality and relying excessively on emotionality, undoubtedly can be easily enjoyed and, impeccable in its aesthetics, attempts in its own way to make its mark on the national film scene. At the Diagonale’23.
With Die Vermieterin, Sebastian Brauneis has once again made something totally unique. A hilarious and moving work, in which there is also – and above all – an important social discourse. At the Diagonale’23.
Hinterland is an expressionist film. A film in which angular sets, cramped streets, sloping buildings, sinister shadows and oblique shots make us experience first-hand one of the most dramatic periods in history and convey anxiety.
In autumn, overripe things fall. And similarly, there seems to be no certainty for the relationships between the protagonists of 1 Verabredung im Herbst. Yet at the same time, Sebastian Brauneis stages the complexity of feelings and interpersonal relationships with an uncommon lightness.
In the film Sargnagel – directed by Sabine Hiebler and Gerhard Ertl – one never knows where fiction ends and reality begins. Is it simply a feature film? A documentary? Probably both. Or perhaps none of the two? At the Diagonale 2021.