Seventeen-year-old Franz journeys to Vienna under Nazi occupation to apprentice at a tobacco shop. There he meets Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, and over time the two very different men form a singular friendship.
Ferdinand is a long-standing employee at Fish Land, the aquatic centre within the globalised leisure complex "Worlds Apart". He's a small, bald forty year-old, and a solitary, anxious introvert, entirely devoted to his passion for fish. But Ferdinand's obsessive little existence is turned upside down the day Fish Land closes down for six months of renovation. He is transferred to another section of "Worlds Apart", the Finnish-Turkish Delight spa, entirely geared towards the pleasure of saunas and steam rooms. Ferdinand is suddenly thrown into a world of nudity, sensuality, relaxation and letting go... In short, everything he could possibly be afraid of! HOT HOT HOT is the belated journey of initiation of an inhibited little man, who slowly but surely learns to open up to the pleasures of life. It paints a colourful yet sensitive picture of a world caught between artificiality and authenticity, between norm and peculiarity.
A series of snapshots from the life of a fictional actress named Shirley serves to weave together thirteen paintings by Edward Hopper (e.g. "Office at Night", "Western Motel", "Usherette", "A Woman in the Sun") into a fascinating synthesis of painting and film, personal and political history. Each station in Shirley’s professional and private life from the 1930s to 1960s is precisely dated: It is always August 28/29 of the year in question, as the locations vary from Paris to New York to Cape Cod.
At the beginning of the 20th Century, Egon Schiele is one of the most provocative artists in Vienna. His life and work are driven by beautiful women and an era that is coming to an end. Two women will have a lasting impact on him - his sister and first muse Gerti, and 17-year-old Wally, arguably Schiele's one true love, immortalized in his famous painting 'Death and the Maiden'. Schiele's radical paintings scandalize Viennese society while daring artists like Gustav Klimt and art agents alike are sensing the exceptional. But Egon Schiele is also prepared to go beyond his own pain and to sacrifice love and life for his art.
Second film in Ulrich Seidl's Paradise trilogy. A devout Catholic woman practises her religion at home and in the local community, but is unprepared for the reappearance of her estranged husband, who is a Muslim.
Bertolt Brecht, a theatre revolutionary, poet of the state, outsider, looks back on his life in 1956, the year of his death, in East Berlin: from provocations in the Augsburg of the First World War, to the early poetic and amorous height flights in Munich and Berlin in the 1920s, his escape from Hitler and US exile, followed by his later years caught in a dilemma between timeless classic and a failing GDR class fighter, an inflexible free man and a compromised Artist.
A genetically engineered plant scatters its seeds and seems to cause uncanny changes on living creatures. The afflicted appear strange, as if they were replaced - especially for those, who are close to them. Or is it all just imagination? Thus starts a play between various truths,on which end stands the loss of the own identity.
Rike is forty, a successful doctor whose job demands everything of her. She intends to use her much-needed annual holiday to fulfill her long-cherished dream of sailing alone from Gibraltar to Ascension, a small tropical island in the middle of the Atlantic. Her desire for a carefree holiday seems to be coming to pass but then, after a storm, her beautiful adventure suddenly turns into an unprecedented challenge when she spots a badly damaged, hopelessly overloaded refugee boat nearby.
18th century Vienna. Maria Theresia von Paradis, a gifted piano player and close friend of Mozart's, lost her eye-sight as a child. Desperate to cure their talented daughter, the Paradis entrust Maria to Dr. Mesmer, a forward-thinking-physician who gives her the care and attention that she requires. With the doctor's innovative techniques of magnetism, Maria slowly recovers her sight. But this miracle comes at a price as the woman progressively starts to lose her gift for music.
A period drama set in the early years of the 20th century. Josef, a former construction worker who delighted in dancing on girders high above the city, who now sweeps up at the circus. Once the big top's owner spots the young roustabout defying gravity on the trapeze, however, he endeavors to pair Josef with his aerialist daughter Alice in a perilous sky-high pas de deux. Offers a romantic view of big top life, with a moth-eaten angel in his feathered, tattered costume.
Winter of starvation, 1947. In Austria desertion from the Wehrmacht is still a crime even after the war. The cook, the farmer, the altar boy, and the head pig keeper give insight into the military terror they were subjected to and their reasons for fleeing. The documentary-style film is a montage of the real fates of young deserters and shows moving moments of traumatic memories and the social ostracism experienced after the war.
The Brussels Business is a docu-thriller that dives into the grey zone underneath European democracy. An expedition into the world of the 15,000 lobbyists in the EU-capital, of the PR-conglomerates, think tanks and their all embracing networks of power and their close ties to the political elites.
The hopelessly romantic Lisa takes desperate measures to win her former lover back, Alf. But the fact that Alf already has a new girl at his side and that Lisa needs to bring her alcoholic father to an antivaricose-campaign photo shooting without letting him know, is not particularly helping.
A documentary & cross-media project about the creativity of non-violent resistance and modern forms of civil disobedience.
A thriller crime comedy directed by Wolfgang Murnberger.
Africa, Europe - Europe and Africa: Surfers live differently on each continent and Africa marks a special place - as surfing is in many places at its very beginnings. 'Beyond - An African Surf Documentary' follows locals along the coast of Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal and Gambia into their homes, visits their home surf spots and takes a look into their surfing lives. Three months of shooting culminated in a 111 minute long episodic journey on a continent, that has the potential to be the next big thing in surfing.