The Field Guide to Evil

An afternoon in the biggest fair of Germany.

What does modern art mean for ordinary visitors to an exhibition?

A Philadelphia couple are in mourning after an unspeakable tragedy creates a rift in their marriage and opens the door for a mysterious force to enter their home.

In Rimini (2022) and Sparta (2022), Ulrich Seidl followed the lives of two brothers, Richie and Ewald, respectively. The former is a crooner long past his prime yet still beloved by hordes of late-middle-aged female fans who can also buy his sexual attention; the latter is a technician living in Romania and wrestling with his pedophile desires. These two tales were supposed to be told in one film – and now they finally are! The result offers a staggeringly different experience of the narrative(s). It's far more cerebral, above all a work of ideas.

Sarah, a former professional kickboxer from Vienna, accepts an offer to work as a personal trainer for a rich family in the Middle East. She finds herself in a foreign world, in a palace behind walls and cut off from the internet, where the sisters are under surveillance around the clock. They have no interest in learning to box. So why has Sarah been brought here?

A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life...

On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.

In the heat of the summer lays a lonesome house in the countryside where nine year old twin brothers await their mother’s return. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, nothing is like before and the children start to doubt whether this woman is actually who she says she is.

In 1750 Austria, a deeply religious woman named Agnes has just married her beloved, but her mind and heart soon grow heavy as her life becomes a long list of chores and expectations. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts, until the possibility of committing a shocking act of violence seems like the only way out of her inner prison.

Vignettes of the lives of several residents of a Vienna suburb during a heat wave.

Ewald moved to Romania years ago. Now in his 40s, he seeks a fresh start. Leaving his girlfriend, he moves to the hinterland. With young boys from the area, he transforms a decaying school into a fortress. The children enjoy a new, carefree existence. But the distrust of the villagers is soon awoken. And Ewald is forced to confront a truth he has long suppressed.

Six Catholics share their thoughts and problems with Jesus in different churches. The camera accompanies them.

For Anna Maria, paradise lies with Jesus, and she devotes her time to door-to-door missionary work. One day after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim confined to a wheelchair, comes home—and soon prayers are replaced by fighting.

Africa. In the wild expanses, where bush-bucks, impalas, zebras, gnus and other creatures graze by the thousands, they are on holiday. German and Austrian hunting tourists drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. They shoot, sob with excitement and pose before the animals they have bagged. A vacation movie about killing, a movie about human nature.

Richie Bravo, once upon a time a successful pop star, chases after his faded fame in wintry Rimini. Trapped between permanent intoxication and concerts for busloads of tourists, his world starts to collapse when his adult daughter breaks into his life.

When twin brothers arrive home to find their mother’s demeanor altered and face covered in surgical bandages, they begin to suspect the woman beneath the gauze might not be their mother.