Gloomy colours, a particularly dark atmosphere, minimalist electronic music and slow camera movements (which, in fact, never show us death directly or up close) make Ruletista a merciless yet ironic and grotesque short film, which stands out above all for its wit and originality. At the Viennale 2024.
Intelligent, at times hilarious and decidedly merciless, Peacock shows us a world in which every aspect of everyday life is studied and planned down to the smallest detail, leaving no place for spontaneity and true feelings. At the 81st Venice Film Festival, section Settimana Internazionale della Critica.
A perfect Pair is distinguished first and foremost by the subtle irony and self-irony that has always characterised the works of VALIE EXPORT. The protagonists seem almost like caricatures, but, in fact, they fit well into a context in which advertising and the exhortation to consumerism play a central role.
Mansur Madavi enjoyed surprising us, confusing us and making us completely identify with his protagonist. Just Behind the Door is a feature film that is both simple and complex at the same time. A feature film that treasures what has been made in the past, but nevertheless finds its own way, proving to be a true gem of Austrian cinema. As part of the retrospective Keine Angst by the Filmarchiv Austria.
Copy Shop is present and future. The loss of identity and subjectivity due to modern media. Copy Shop is the loss of all certainty, in a world where we no longer know what is true and what is not.
Anything is possible in Charms Incidents. The series of events seems to follow no logic and what results are numerous highly Kafkaesque paradoxical situations.
Surreal, bizarre, but also tender and rather naïve, Drei Herren is certainly not a perfect feature film. And yet, as we get closer to the finale, each character turns out to be much more complex and multifaceted than it might initially seem.
Jesus of Ottakring, the brilliant debut feature by WIlhelm Pellert, points the finger at a hypocritical and perbenist society, which dangerously tends to marginalise those considered ‘different’, which at all costs looks for a scapegoat to blame for everything, but which, at the same time, desperately needs a guide, someone to idolise.
Everything is floating in a timeless dimension in Vergiss Sneider!, Götz Spielmann’s medium-length graduation film. And next to a dark humour in the background, next to a subtle as well as vibrant eroticism, next to characters whose obsessions are taken to the extreme, we see a theatrical mise-en-scène that clearly refers to the Theatre of the Absurd, without forgetting Roman Polanski himself or even the science fiction films of the glorious Hollywood of the 1950s and 1960s.
With an extremely essential mise-en-scène, Thomas Marschall has perfectly succeeded in giving his Ordinary Creatures a surreal and highly alienating character, thanks to figures that are now inexplicably mute and so inexpressive as to seem almost unfriendly, up to scenes with a strong dreamlike atmosphere.