Mother’s Day – Harald Sicheritz’s debut feature, which, alongside an often excessively fragmented plot, features an overall good characterisation of upper-class Austrian society – has become, over the years, a true cult within contemporary Austrian cinema.
Gli Appunti di Anna Azzori – Uno Specchio che viaggia nel Tempo is a feature film that is not afraid to take risks, which lets itself be inspired by a successful blending of arts and which, alongside excerpts from Grifi and Sarchielli’s previous work, also features archive footage, various hearing levels and – why not? – even a welcome touch of meta-cinema.
During the making of Running on Empty, for more than three years young filmmaker Lisa Weber closely followed the story of Claudia, who became a mother when she was only fifteen. This project, co-produced by Ulrich Seidl, strongly recalls the cinema of Richard LInklater.
If The Trouble with Being Born – directed by Sandra Wollner – on the one hand, reveals a good knowledge of film medium, on the other hand, it ends up being an essentially inconclusive film, which does not always make the most of its potential.
The faces of those who have witnessed different historical periods one after the other, hands intent on handling old card decks, cosy little taverns and cheerful choirs of old friends enjoying themselves singing – with the accompaniment of an accordion – old traditional Viennese songs are the true soul of Notes from the Underworld, the newest work by documentary filmmakers Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel.
Due to the extreme care with which it was realised, Couples, by Austrian painter Maria Lassnig, looks like a very mature work, where animation, painting, photography and live action cinema come together to create a short but significant film, merging into one another in perfect harmony.
Felicity Jones’ undoubted charisma counts for little. The successful comic sketches performed by Bernhardt, the keeper of the chalet played by Austrian Gregor Bloéb, count for little: Phil Traill’s Chalet Girl – a co-production between Great Britain, Germany and Austria – is, unfortunately, a weak, uninspiring comedy with predictable and sometimes forced twists.
There is a special world that is told in Washed Ashore. This, in fact, is the world of fishermen, of cemetery keepers, of Buddhist monks, of homeless people, of soldiers used to gather for their exercises far from residential areas. A world where many cultures come together with dozens of different stories. Stories and people who, however, have something great in common: the Danube.
The Salzburg Story suffers excessively from a television style, complete with bright colours, overexposed shots, frequent pans of the picturesque city of Salzburg, and dialogue that is so banal and predictable that it discourages any initially curious spectator from the very first minutes.
Perfectly according to the poetics of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, The Sinful Women of Höllfall mainly plays with feelings, fears and suggestions experienced by the characters themselves. What is staged is, in fact, the very fear of the Trud and the deep sense of guilt that such a legend has managed to generate in the past.