BERLINALE 2012 Market / Austria
Diversity is what counts for the Austrians, and Haneke is still there
With five selections for the Berlin International Film Festival – three for the Panorama, including the opening film, and two in the Forum – it is a good Berlinale for the Austrians: ”And the five entries give you the right idea of current Austrian cinema,” said Managing Director Martin Schweighofer (pictured), of the Austrian Film Commission.
”Three of the films are feature debuts, and it is always a good sign when first-time directors are picked up for the official programme – it illustrates the dynamics that characterises the current scene,” he added.
The Panorama was launched by Austrian director Umut Dag’s Kuma [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: UmutDağ
film profile], which follows a Turkish immigrant family – Fatma, her husband and six children – living in Vienna, trying to preserve traditional values and social prestige. A Panorama Special, Austrian director Julian Roman Pölsler’s The Wall [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is the story of a woman waking up in a mountain cabin and discovering that it is surrounded by an invisible wall with no life on the other side.
Also in the Austrian Berlinale package for Panorama are Peter Kern’s Faith Love Death, while Anja Salomonowitz’s Spain [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Ruth Mader’s What Is Love? are screening in the Forum.
”The strength of Austrian cinema is its diversity, like Kuma is an immigration story with social issues, while The Wall is a psychological drama with a lot of inner monologues. The 25 films produced annually reach from mainstream to hardcore arthouse, documentaries and genre films – always unpredictable. It is not like ’here is a new Michael Haneke film, and here we have five Haneke spin-offs,” Schweighofer concluded.
Haneke is still around, though, with Amour, starring Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant - a hot ticket for the upcoming Cannes International Film Festival, where his The Piano Teacher (2001) won three prizes and caused the rules to be changed so the maximum for a film is now two, which his The White Ribbon [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michael Haneke
film profile] scooped in 2009, including the Golden Palm.
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