Der Schutzengel stands out immediately for its evocative noir atmospheres, for places almost isolated from the rest of the world and for an intelligent and never predictable reflection on the nature of human beings. Götz Spielmann’s unmistakable approach did the rest. At the Diagonale’22.
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?
Eternity at last is a journey into the future, into science, into science fiction. But it is also a highly poetic documentary. At the Diagonale 2021.
The extreme realism of Northern Skirts gives way here to an impeccable elegance. And even if we are nostalgic for that suburbia so well depicted in the debut feature by the Viennese director, we have to admit that Mademoiselle Paradis shows a marked personality.
In the Bazaar of Sexes, the second documentary by Austro-Iranian director Sudabeh Mortezai (known internationally for the feature film Joy, already awarded at the Venice Film Festival 2018) tells us about a reality known to few, namely that of temporary marriages. But what are, in fact, these temporary marriages?
With a sophisticated black and white that recalls the cinematography of Katzelmacher (Fassbinder’s first film, 1969), The Pacific Ocean – the first feature by Xaver Schwarzenberger, Fassbinder’s long-time assistant – is a work that, in its own way, has become a milestone in Austrian and German cinema of the 1980s.