Nora Czamler

Bobby drives back and forth between Vienna and Salzburg, giving lifts to strangers on the way, sharing conversations that drift from the mundane to the deeply personal. In this tender portrait of today’s Europe, anonymity and warmth still go hand in hand.

Several young actresses, mostly fresh from theatre school, follow the casting call for a role tailored to their lives: that of an actress auditioning for the role of an actress… An intriguing mix of documentary and fiction that examines the complexities of womanhood as role play and acting as social practice.

In an observation over four seasons THE STANDSTILL shows Vienna and its surroundings along with encounters with people during and after the Corona crisis. The film tells of the immediate and also the long-term effects, which can only be evaluated and classified in the future.

Several billion tons of earth are moved annually by humans - with shovels, excavators or dynamite. Nikolaus Geyrhalter observes people in mines, quarries, large construction sites in a constant struggle to appropriate the planet.

The Schigymnasium Stams is one of the most successful ski schools in the world. This is where young athletes grow up, who live out their passions without compromise. STAMS is a film that wants to understand the enthusiasm for competitive sports and the dream of success.

Vice Lieutenant Eismayer is the most feared trainer and model macho in the Austrian Military and lives as a gay man in secret. When he falls in love with a young, openly gay soldier, his world gets turned upside down.

“What the hell happened to my country?” After Donald Trump’s election, this is a burning question for Susanne Brandstätter, an American filmmaker who’s lived most her life in Austria. With the critical distance of a European and an insider’s eye, she gets close to Trump voters in Ohio: a microcosm of a deeply divided USA. Showing striking parallels to Europe, the documentary explores polarization and why people stick to their political opinions – no matter what. Is there no way out?

Lost in thought in the midsummer heat, Georg suddenly has only one goal. To make his huge, overgrown garden beautiful again at the weekend. But as he spends his days alone in the house he once shared with his ex-wife Sieglinde, who comes to visit at the end of the weekend, he has to deal not only with the garden, but also with absurd visits, memories, nosy neighbours and himself.

The desert city of Agadez in Niger has been a hub of trade routes since time immemorial. The local Tuareg population always earned a good living by transporting goods and people across the Sahara. But Agadez is also a place where migrants pass through on their way to Europe.

Fresh out of a psychiatric hospital, Pia moves back in with her parents to get her life together. Torn between a new job, lovesickness, psychotropic drugs and social stigmatization, she emerges into a world where everything seems out of control.

A music professor facing redundancy and a serious hoarding habit is pushed to extremes when he discovers his girlfriend has given a treasured 1960s band jacket to charity. He enlists a young ambitious musicologist to accompany him on a mission to retrieve the jacket.

At the Natural History Museum in Vienna, everything that is found on earth and in outer space and that humans can get their hands on, is collected, archived, and studied in the name of evolutionary research. Archiv der Zukunft captures the aesthetic appeal of the natural-history collection and its working process, illuminating the mammoth project of knowledge preservation and production hidden behind the building’s imperial façade.

A film about our garbage that is found in the most remote areas and about the people who try to dispose of it. Not only in the sea and on coasts, also in the Arctic, the jungle, high up on the mountains and deep inside the desert, garbage is found almost everywhere in various forms and dimensions, sometimes as whole car wrecks, old TV sets or simply construction rubble, but mostly in the form of disintegrated plastic particles a few millimetres in size. Humanity has handed out its visiting cards thoroughly.

The whole family is helping with preparations for Danuta and Maciej’s golden wedding anniversary party. Danuta knows exactly what she wants and delegates her wishes to those around her. Her German niece Alexandra, the maker of this film, has travelled to Warsaw to take part. Barely has she sat down at the kitchen table when a heated discussion ensues. Be it abortion or migration, it soon dawns on Alexandra that her view of the world could not be more different from that of her right-wing conservative relatives in Poland. Alone in her ‘liberal’ view Alexandra is mocked as a victim of western propaganda… Filmmaker Alexandra Wesolowski uses a family gathering as an opportunity to portray her own family and allows us intimate insight into Polish society and the populist national-conservative Europe of today.

Widerstandsmomente (Moments of Resistance) carries voices, writings, and objects from the anti-Nazi resistance into the present. Politically engaged women of today respond to historical resistance and make links to current events. A line is drawn from what was before and what is today to what might be: a society based on solidarity without discrimination or exclusion.