Making your way in the world of cooking, searching for your place in the world. The hypothetical tag-line of the documentary She Chef could be this, summarising the training path that Agnes Karrasch, a 25-year-old Austrian, decides to undertake in order to realise her dream.
Particularly accurate in its settings and sufficiently attentive to the love torments of the two young protagonists, The Life and Loves of Mozart is distinguished by a direction that, however, would have needed more closeness to the characters themselves, in order to better render their internal conflicts derived from the difficult choices they have to make. In competition at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
Club Zero is a mercilessly sincere feature film, extremely rigorous in its mise-en-scene, which finds its ideal mood in a sharp irony. The image of society depicted here has the sharp, vivid colours of a world in which no half-measures are allowed. Just like in the cinema of Hausner, who has been minutely analysing every single aspect of this very world for years now. In competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2023.
Film adaptation of a play, Adorable Julia has the good-natured and calm irony of the W.S. Maugham novel on which it is based, with sharp dialogues and a subtle social criticism that is surprisingly topical. At times predictable, it nevertheless manages to give iconic moments, thanks to the voice and above all the thoughts of the protagonist, a very convincing Lili Palmer. In competition at the Cannes Film Festival 1962.
The Last Bridge is a deep and touching drama that, at a time when people were trying to process what had happened in the dramatic preceding years, shows us war as a completely unfair reality. A reality that when compared to the value of human beings, of every human being, reveals itself in all its weakness and wickedness. In competition at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival.
Everyone has something to hide. Michael Haneke knows this well. And he also knows that certain secrets and faults from the past can also have a strong, very strong impact on the present. In Hidden, therefore, the protagonist’s past returns in the most devious way.
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.
Head over Heels, the newest film by director and screenwriter Andreas Schmied, author of, among others, the thrilling Chasing the Line, is the classic light comedy, lacking nothing to laugh at but where one knows exactly where it is getting at. An honest film for a classic rainy Sunday afternoon.
Although cinema had been invented some thirteen years before, Austria still had to familiarise itself with this new form of artistic expression. Cameras were still very rudimentary and scene changes rarely took place. Also In the Bath, therefore, has the simplest mise en scène possible. Everything takes place in a single room and, thanks to some editing cuts to give the whole thing dynamism, the scene unfolds rather quickly.
Frühling in Neapel by Walter Größbauer is altogether a well-shot documentary that leaves nothing to chance. Didactic, it marginally deals with certain themes, but gives more visibility to the positive aspects and the solutions found to defeat the many demons, whatever they may be.