It’s hard to find a more popular city than Venice. But what is a dream for many people has become a nightmare for the residents. This film shows cruise ships and coaches spilling their loads of tourists at the banks of the old town, from which they flood squares, bridges and alleys. The tourists may bring money – especially for the big corporations -, but they are also the curse of this city.
This film follows a few residents, perhaps the last of their kind, through their Venice. They show an infrastructure on the verge of collapse. Food stores are rare; schools and post offices have closed, replaced by ever more hotels and piers for huge cruise ships. “What can you do?” a Venetian woman asks resignedly. “Sell glassware and souvenirs?” She too rents out her house to pay for its refurbishment. Another born Venetian is forced to move to the mainland because he can’t afford the rent. Only foreigners and rich Italians can pay the expensive prices per square meter, an embittered real estate agent concludes. Only 60000 residents still live in the historic city centre today. The same number of people visit the city every day. Venice is degenerating into an open air museum. The film takes a sobering look behind the picture postcard idylls of Doge’s Palace, Rialto Bridge and the pigeons of St. Mark’s Square.

– Antje Stamer

Igor Hauzenberger’s film is extremely disturbing. When, in the name of article 278a, which was adopted to fight organisations like the Mafia and Al Qaeda, a protest letter is turned into a threat, an animal rights activist into an enemy of the state, and an NGO into a terrorist organisation, the pillars of our civil society are beginning to totter alarmingly. Thirteen animal rights activists are facing trial in Vienna because they staged some high-profile protests against factory farming and fur trading in front of stables and department stores. Sure, naked protesters in the Viennese city in the middle of winter, carrying dead animals or, covered in blood, crucified pigs’ heads through the streets, are not a pleasant sight. It’s also annoying that this Association against Factory Farming (VGT) is not simply a gang of losers but an international network among whose leaders are scientists and green politicians, including the charismatic Dr. Dr. Martin Balluch who chose the way of the street after a university career. Igor Hauzenberger follows the protesters over several years, tries to shed some light on the legal jungle and persistently tries to get public attorneys, press officers and department store operators in front of his camera. In vain. This biggest criminal case in Austria yet is turning into a test case: democracy versus those who are not averse to shouting “we need Hitler back” occasionally.
– Cornelia Klauß

Kern is excessive in every respect and impressive not just because of his girth. A former Fassbinder actor, he is an aging diva, openly gay, an irritating and uncompromising character. His strong voice fills every room, even if it is only a modest modern flat in the Viennese suburbs. He is on stage everywhere, keeping the two directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala on a short leash. He never for a moment permits any illusion about who is directing this film. He turns the camera around and holds the mirror up to us. He is the finger in the wound, exposing our voyeurism and pleasure in the obscene. But Franz and Fiala bravely stand up to him and disarm him by revealing their strategies. This shadow-boxing produces an extraordinary and complex portrait. It’s true that we don’t learn much about Peter Kern the human being, but a lot about the artist he plays so consummately, a role by now inseparable from his self. One of the rare magic cinema moments comes when Kern snuggles up to the cameraman’s hand. One is reminded of “The Beauty and the Beast” – only who is who?

Cornelia Klauß

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Talent Dove in the Young Cinema Competition 2012

Dirty clothes are scattered along the railway tracks, thrown there by those who stowed away under freight trains to escape the poverty of Moldavia. The unemployment rate is 80 percent, a third of the population have already left the country. Today it’s mostly the women who leave to work as illegal cleaners or caregivers in the West, with no health insurance and no rights. The smugglers are expensive and the risk of being caught is high, so they stay away for years. They do the jobs no one else wants to do and earn little money. But the plan doesn’t work because once abroad they change; want to live like the people whose homes they are cleaning while their children are waiting at home and the fathers are baking the bread. Ed Moschitz accompanied three of those women for seven years. This remarkably long period of time, which the film fought for, enables us to look at all angles. The children’s alienation from mothers they only know through Skype, the men’s disappointment when their wives mock their housekeeping, and the conflict of the guest workers who have no documents in the West and can’t find their way back home. The film is a passionate appeal to politicians to create a legal framework for these realities. The look at a classroom in a Moldavian village school, where almost all the children are “motherless”, ought to be motivation enough.
– Cornelia Klauß

A man enters an empty, run-down room with yellowed wallpaper. The view outside the single window reveals a sparse tree in front of a desolate city. Suddenly the door closes shut barring the only way out.
A metaphorical film about comprehension, control and the freeing powers of an emotional outbreak.