In our VIENNALE DAILIES you'll find everything you need to know about what's happening around the festival!
What is important is that it should move people - whether it elicits rejection or admiration.
Julia Ducournau on film
FILMTIPS FOR TODAY
ALPHA
Dir: Julia Ducournau
France, Belgium 2025 | 128 minutes | OV w/GER subtitles & OV w/ENG subtitles
Sunday, October 26, 8.30 pm: GARTENBAUKINO (OV w/GER subtitles)
Monday, October 27, 5.00 pm: STADTKINO IM KÜNSTLERHAUS (OV w/ENG subtitles)
Julia Ducournau, the Palme d’Or-winning director of TITANE (2021), returns with another tale of bodily breakdowns and visceral horror with ALPHA—an elliptical, dystopian drama that reimagines the early years of the AIDS crisis, when Ducournau herself was a young girl. Set in the 1980s in a fictional port city that resembles Marseille, the film weaves together a grim coming-of-age narrative with a fantastical premise, in which a mysterious blood-borne disease turns its victims’ flesh into marble. The heroine is a rebellious 13-year-old girl named Alpha (Mélissa Boros), the daughter of a single mother and doctor (Golshifteh Farahani) with North African roots. Early on, Alpha is given a tattoo at a house party, which becomes grossly infected, suggesting that the tattooists’ dirty needle carried the fatal sickness. A mood of dread dominates given the uncertainty around Alpha’s well-being, and the unexpected arrival of her uncle (Tahar Ramin), a heroin addict, further destabilises her school and family life. Thanks to its cast’s vivid performances, ALPHA manages to balance out its more spectacular elements with a powerful sense of vulnerability, ultimately achieving unexpected grace. (Beatrice Loayza)
In the presence of Julia Ducournau.
On Monday, October 27 at 8 PM, a talk with Julia Ducournau will take place at the Metro Kinokulturhaus/Kinosalon.
LA OLA
Dir: Sebastián Lelio
Chile 2025 | 129 minutes | OV w/ ENG subtitles
Sunday, October 26, 11 pm: STADTKINO IM KÜNSTLERHAUS
Hyper-kinetic and politically committed, LA OLA is a combative, eye-catching and fiercely intense musical. Inspired by Chile’s 2018 feminist student uprising, Sebastián Lelio and his three women cowriters channel activism into a story charged with emotion and accusations level at the backward, sexist patriarchy. Julia, a workingclass music student, becomes a symbol of collective struggle after a non-consensual sexual encounter with her teaching assistant. As feminist awareness grows, the film turns into a wave of dance which floods the university halls. Students demand accountability for sexual misconduct. Rage runs through every frame via slogans, lyrics and, above all, choreography; here, bodies are weapons. Abusers, for their part, are frozen in twisted grimaces. Haunting music and dynamic camerawork paradoxically deepen the sense of paralysis surrounding the silence of survivors’, predators’ control and institutional apathy. As reality blurs, walls crack open, revealing intimate spaces—like the room where Julia was abused—to be part of a vast, all-engulfing labyrinth. With raw urgency, LA OLA reminds us: rage is not the end, but rather the beginning of resistance. (Maria Giovanna Vagenas)
Mare's Nest
Dir: Ben Rivers
United Kingdom, France, Canada 2025 | 98 min | OV w/ENG subtitles
Sunday, October 26, 12.00 pm: URANIA
MARE’S NEST is a thrilling cinematic journey into a post- apocalyptic utopia that celebrates the boundless wisdom and imagination of children. Inspired in part by Don DeLillo’s one-act play The Word for Snow, it unfolds as a series of epiphanies rather than a linear narrative. Moon, the captivating Moon Guo Barker, is our fearless guide. She survives a car crash unscathed, walks along a deserted road and engages a tortoise in a dialogue on evolution. With serene detachment, she roams through sublime yet desolate vistas, where the rusting remnants of the industrial age surface, following an invisible path and exchanging ideas with those she meets. Children in rags—grimy, earnest, wise and free from rules— cross her path, living in joyful anarchy, inventing new games and rituals. Adults appear only once, trapped in a dark cave, a haunting image of pain and sin frozen in time. Shot on 16mm that alternates between colour and black and white and with an immersive, vibrating soundscape, Ben Rivers’ visual poem ultimately arrives at a place of hope; in this world of children, beauty and humanity have returned. Moon’s sly smile as she drives off in a new car only seals the promise. (Maria Giovanna Vagenas)
In the presence of Ben Rivers.
PROGRAM TIP
CINEMATOGRAPHY: GASPARCOLOR
Sunday, October 26, 11.00 am: METRO, HISTORISCHER SAAL
You can read the essay on the program HERE!
SOME OF OUR GUESTS TODAY
Julia Ducournau
Director of
ALPHA
Massimo D’Anolfi
Martina Parenti
Directors
Grandi speranze
Monografie: Martina Parenti & Massimo D'Anolfi
Helena Girón
Samuel M. Delgado.
Directors of
UN DRAGÓN DE CIEN CABEZAS
Manuel Knapp
Directors of
de natura tenebrarum
Viktoria Schmid
Director of
ROJO ŽALIA BLAU
Aaron Brookner
Producer of
Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars
NOVA '78
Sylvain George
Director of
Nuit obscure – "Ain’t I a Child?"
Ottavia Fragnito
Producer of
Nuit obscure – "Ain’t I a Child?
Claire Simon
Director of
ECRIRE LA VIE: ANNIE ERNAUX RACONTÉE PAR DES LYCÉENNES ET DES LYCÉENS
Erige Sehiri
Director of
Promis le ciel
Nadav Lapid
Director of
KEN