January: Teutonic Cinema
January: Teutonic Cinema, FLMTQ Releases 168-172
During the month of January Filmatique presents Teutonic Cinema, a collection of formally daring films from contemporary directors working in Germany and Austria.
Karl Markovics' first feature Breathing portrays a 19-year-old who glimpses the possibility of living outside the stewardship of the Austrian state, while Christian Petzold's acclaimed Barbara offers a minimalist study of surveillance and subversion in the former German Democratic Republic. Jessica Hausner's Lourdes deconstructs the experience of beatitude, as a woman ostensibly suffering from multiple sclerosis is miraculously healed upon arriving at a holy site. Ulrich Seidl casts his unremitting cinematic gaze upon Europe's East-West divide in Import/Export; in Sebastian Schipper's Victoria, the camera follows a young woman's journey deep into Berlin's criminal underground in one single, uninterrupted shot.
Spotlighting emerging filmmakers alongside established auteurs, Filmatique's Teutonic Cinema Series elucidates an innovative cinematic culture anchored in diverse formal technique—from social realism to narrative ambiguity, aesthetic minimalism to bravura long-take cinematography.
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Breathing, Karl Marcovics (2011)
Breathing, Karl Marcovics / Austria, 2011
Roman Kogler is a nineteen-year old living in a juvenile detention center outside Vienna. His parole hearing is on the horizon, and with it the prospect of life outside for the first time in his adult existence. Following a series of unsuccessful job interviews, Kogler is drawn toward an ad in the paper publicizing an open position at the city morgue. A chance encounter with a deceased woman, also named Kogler, motivates him to go looking for the mother he has never known.
Featuring a finely-attuned lead performance by newcomer Thomas Schubert, and capturing the alienation of municipal spaces with precisely framed cinematography, Breathing offers a poetic, social-realist portrait of a young man coming to terms with his past, and his future. Veteran actor Karl Markovics' directorial debut premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Label Europa Cinemas Award; São Paulo, where it won the International Jury Award for Best Feature Film; Molodist, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize; Camerimage, where it won Best Directorial Debut; and Sarajevo, where it won Best Film and Best Actor. Breathing also won six Austrian Film Awards, including Best Film.
Barbara, Christian Petzold (2012)
Barbara, Christian Petzold / Germany, 2012
Barbara Wolff arrives in a small town in East Germany, having been transferred from Berlin's prestigious Charité hospital following an unspecified transgression. Consigned to the provinces, and under the constant threat of invasive checks by the GDR's secret police, Barbara goes to work each day at a small pediatric hospital and takes clandestine measures to meet her boyfriend from the West. The return of a woman far needier than her, and her growing kinship with a fellow doctor, however, complicate her plans for escape.
Enveloped in rich sensory textures and the mounting tension of quotidian life behind the Iron Curtain, Barbara methodically charts the internal psychological journey of a woman at the threshold of two worlds. Christian Petzold's fifth feature premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won Best Director. Barbara was nominated in eight categories of the German Film Awards, winning Best Film, and is a New York Times Critics' Pick.
Lourdes, Jessica Hausner (2009)
Lourdes, Jessica Hausner / Austria-France-Germany, 2009
Christine is afflicted by multiple sclerosis and thus confined to a wheelchair. Like many other pilgrims she travels to Lourdes, a tiny town high in the Pyrenees that remains an iconic site for the faithful. Once there, something strange begins to happen—Christine appears to regain use of her limbs. While her improvement is hailed by many as an act of God, others remain skeptical of Christine's unexplained recovery.
Charting a course of ambiguity between faith and doubt, pilgrimage and cynical capitalism, kismet and deceit, Lourdes unsettles our epistemologies surrounding the occurrence of miracles. Jessica Hausner's fourth feature premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Prize; Seville, where it won Best Film; Vienna, where it won the Best Feature Film; and Warsaw, where it won the Grand Prix.
Import/Export, Ulrich Seidl (2005)
Import/Export, Ulrich Seidl / Austria-France-Germany, 2005
Olga lives in Ukraine with her mother and young child, working by day as a nurse. This occupation, however, does not pay her enough to survive—she thus flees for Austria, where she hopes she can forge a better life as a nursing home attendant. Paul follows the inverse trajectory, departing Austria for the East after he is terminated from his job as a security guard. Here he encounters a desolate world not unlike the one he left behind, where he will nonetheless search for meaning.
A bracing exploration of the intersections of power, capital, and violence within the chasm separating Eastern and Western Europe, Import/Export interrogates the spectator's position in these hierarchies through its obfuscation of the boundaries separating reality and fiction. Ulrich Seidl's second narrative feature premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, IFFR - Rotterdam, Hong Kong, and IndieLisboa, where it won a Special Mention. Import/Export is also a New York Times Critics' Pick.
Victoria, Sebastian Schipper (2015)