In our VIENNALE DAILIES you'll find everything you need to know about what's happening around the festival
There needs to be an element of
science fiction in everything I do.
I call it 30 degrees off realism.
(Athina Rachel Tsangari)
FILMTIPS FOR TODAY
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT
Payal Kapadia | France, India, Netherlands, Luxembourg 2024 | 117 min | OV w/EN subtitles
Monday, October 21, 12.00 pm: GARTENBAUKINO
Tuesday, October 29, 6.00 pm: URANIA
Mumbai has long been a city of celluloid dreams and nightmares, but Payal Kapadia mines the Indian metropolis for shimmering new cinematic visions in ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT, which earned the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The intimate lives of three women, all employees at a hospital, unfurl in the city’s perennially lucent night. Middle-aged nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) yearns for her husband, who left to work in Germany years ago, while shyly indulging the polite advances of a doctor; the younger Anu (Divya Prabha) is caught up in a passionate but verboten romance with a Muslim lover; and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), a cleaning lady approaching retirement, finally gives up on her ongoing battle against eviction and decides to move back to her coastal hometown. Woven together with textured scenes of Mumbai’s bustle and anonymous testimonies from the city’s residents that are delivered in various languages, the three women’s stories coalesce into an extraordinarily delicate portrait of urban life, where desire and danger, solitude and sorority form a heady mix. (Devika Girish)
HARVEST
Athina Rachel Tsangari | UK, Germany, Greece, France, United States | 131 Min | OV w/EN subtitles
Monday, October 21, 3.00 pm: GARTENBAUKINO
Monday, October 28, 1.15 pm: URANIA
At one point in the gritty folk-fable HARVEST, Walter Thirsk (Caleb Landy Jones), a farmer and former manservant to the lord of an agricultural collective (Henry Melling), describes his community as “circle people”. In other words, their way of life stands against a linear view of history and capitalism’s relentless quantification of value. Thirsk’s people—as the film shows through a fiery portent and the eventual arrival of snivelling aristocrats aiming to modernise (i.e. extract wealth from) their lands—will soon be surplus to requirement. Directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari (ATTENBERG) and shot in grainy 16mm by cinematographer Sean Price Williams, this eerie allegorical drama immerses the viewer in the pagan traditions of a pre-industrial English village, which is not only being threatened from the outside but also rotting from the inside; its xenophobic inhabitants are quick to violently persecute a trio of innocent visitors. A feat of worldbuilding smeared with mud, semen and grass stains, HARVEST is a hypnotic portrait of cultural decay and the first English-language feature from one of Greece’s most audacious filmmakers. (Beatrice Loayza)
FOGO DO VENTO
Marta Mateus | Portugal, Switzerland, France 2024 | 72 min | OV w/EN subtitles
Monday, October 21, 8.45 pm: STADTKINO IM KÜNSTLERHAUS
Wednesday, October 23, 6.30 pm: METRO, HISTORISCHER SAAL
On the front page of a newspaper, we read: “The people are no longer afraid.” On the imaginary front page of another newspaper, we might also read: “The people now have a filmmaker.” For what is FOGO DO VENTO if not the kaleidoscopic portrait of those with almost nothing apart from their will and the strength to work? In 230 shots, all of them static except for two brief pans, Marta Mateus brings together the inhabitants of a particular village. After a day of harvesting grapes in the vineyards, they have to run and climb the trees of the estate to escape from a bull. The animal was attracted by the blood of a young girl who cut her hand while working, although perhaps the bull is on the loose because the owners of the land want it that way (the creature’s metaphorical charge is magnificent, as is the depth of field of the shots that show it lurking). As they wait in the trees, night falls. The workers were already sharing their memories and states of mind, examining their class consciousness and episodes in the political history of Portugal, as well as their yearning for a just life. Natural light and the beautiful specificity of the angles used to compose each shot seem to caress the characters and return them to grace. (Roger Koza)
In the presence of Marta Mateus.
SOME OF OUR GUESTS TODAY
Denis Lavant
Actor in
C'EST PAS MOI
Thomas Woschitz
Director of
THE MILLION DOLLAR BET
Sean Rogers
Actor in
THE MILLION DOLLAR BET
Rusudan Glurjidze
Director of
ANTIKVARIATI
Zurab Magalashvili
Producer of
ANTIKVARIATI
Kamal Aljafari
Director of
A FIDAI FILM and
UNDR
Kazik Radwanski
Director of
MATT AND MARA
Heinz Emigholz
Director of
THE SUIT
Andrei Ujică
Director of
TWST - Things We Said Today
TALK: JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER
Monday, October 21, 6 pm: Viennale Zentralino
As a late addition to the Viennale Zentralino program we welcome Joshua Oppenheimer (THE ACT OF KILLING, THE LOOK OF SILENCE) for an exclusive film talk. Oppenheimer, known for his unique combination of fiction and reality when he has perpetrators re-enact their own crimes, deals intensively with themes such as guilt and memory in his films. But also with the artistic responsibility that goes hand in hand with the staging of violence and power. His latest film, THE END, combines a surreal musical and acute social criticism: in the afterglow of the climate apocalypse, a family in an underground bunker struggles with the lies they tell themselves about their isolated life of luxury. Moderation: Norman Shetler (Gartenbaukino)
In cooperation with Stadtkino Filmverleih.
VIDEO OF THE DAY
To get in the mood for today's talk in Viennale Zentralino, check out the Q&A with Joshua Oppenheimer here:
PRESS
"Sasquatch Sunset": Die ganz normale Bigfoot-Familie
Interview mit Viennale-Leiterin Eva Sangiorgi: "Es war ein extrem gutes Jahr"
FESTIVAL PICTURES
All picture galleries can be found HERE!
