Half a Life

Shadows in the Spotlight: Stand-ins and bit players. Human material rented out for about 400 schillings a day. Live background, human scenery.

In the beginning was the rhythm, then came the melody, or vice versa. At least this is the case in Vienna, where, in the quarter of Alt-Erlaa, one of the most multi-facetted musicians of the free jazz scene, Walter Malli, has his home.

Paula Rom and her family live in the suburb of a small city - happily and approved by society. Their average and inconspicuous life changes totally, when her 15 years old son shoots ten of his classmates and kills himself afterwards. From that day nothing is how it used to be. The whole family has to struggle with the anger and sorrow of the people around them. They need to deal with the assassination and the circumstances, how it could come to the disaster out of nowhere.

After many successful years, Hans loses his job overnight - and with it the stability and meaning in his life. Undecided what he wants to do with himself and his future, he drives through Vienna and ends up in the "Südpol", a pub on the other side of the city.

Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys and hardships of life by working as an apprentice to the mutilated war veteran Otto Trsnjek in a small tobacco shop, where he meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, who will become a valuable friend in times of chaos and uncertainty.

A male body is found in the Steyr breakthrough reservoir. The police officers of the LKA Linz do not think about suicide. Shortly afterwards it turns out that the dead man is the man who killed Sepp Ahorner's wife and daughter in an accident and who Sepp had been looking for for years.

In her teens, Mme. Zachanassian had to flee her home town in disgrace. Now she's old and rich and the town is facing bankruptcy. But she returns with news that she wants to help - as long as the townsfolk kill someone for her.

Maria has been living in a retirement home in Vienna for almost two years, but she is far from finished with life. She tries to break up the monotonous routine with creative ideas, much to the chagrin of the prickly home manager, who wants to manage her oldies with as little stress as possible. However, the residents are grateful for any change of pace, and former bar pianist Jakob in particular loves Maria's boisterous vitality. He keeps telling her about his East Prussian homeland and his childhood friend Paul, whom he lost sight of after the war.

Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland.

The body of a teenage girl is found at the foot of a waterfall, a heart-shaped stone in her hand. The investigation leads the police on the trail of a local legend.

Herbert lives a rather simple life, left to his own devices. He works as a projectionist in a shabby Viennese movie theater and lives alone with his red nameless cat in the free caretaker's apartment of a somewhat run-down apartment building. Now and then he visits his mother in a nursing home, meets with an old friend of his father, or comes to meetings of a savings club. Saving money is pretty much the center of his life because he has a dream. He wants to emigrate to the U.S. to buy his own movie theater and to reunite with his long-lost father. But when Rita, a young student, moves into the apartment building things in his life are changed completely.

During a joint operation by Czech and Austrian police officers against an illegal rave party in the border forest, young Austrian policewoman Johanna tragically dies and a Czech drug dealer named Sicilian disappears mysteriously. A rookie cop refuses to let the killer of his colleague go unpunished.

An aging renowned art history researcher falls in love with a younger woman who struggles and tries to cover his ongoing Alzheimer's's.

Thomas, a student drop-out, keeps his head above water with a life of petty crime. Passing himself off once again as a ticket inspector on a tram to extract money from fare-dodgers, he is confronted by Erich, a genuine inspector, or so it seems... However, Erich won his inspector's identity badge at cards. The two begin to meet regularly. Thomas doesn't realise until too late that he is to play a major role in Erich's long-planned coup. The well thought out plan succeeds. Unfortunately, however, Erich has failed to consider how he can convert his booty - a lorry load of valuable carpets - into hard cash. Their problems are just beginning...

Dölken, Ivo and Sichel, three amiable and harmless inmates of a mental asylum are off to spend the summer in an open institution in the country. The trip they have been looking forward to for so long ends abruptly when the driver of their bus suffers a heart attack. The three men quite naturally assume that they have reached their destination and find somewhere to stay in the nearest village.