Tue, November 7 2017, 3 pm
METRO Kinokulturhaus
Johannesgasse 4, 1010 Wien
FREE ADMISSION! Counting tickets are available directly at the cinema on November 7, starting 2pm (maximum 2 tickets per film and person).
For 11 years now, the LUX Film Prize has been bringing the most remarkable European films to the European Parliament. Films that explore new ways of crossing cultural borders and overcoming emotional barriers through a common language, cinema, that can be understood anywhere in the continent.
D: Robin Campillo, FR 2017 | 144 min, colour, OV with German subtitles
Quietly epic, sad but never sentimental, and blissfully at ease with sex as life not death, 120 BATTEMENTS PAR MINUTE throws us into the debates and protests of “Act-Up Paris”, an AIDS awareness campaigning group in early 1990’s Paris. We follow Act-Up at their weekly meetings, at Gay Pride and during direct actions. Alongside its very public dramas and deft portrayal of group solidarity, the film leans in on one campaigner, Sean, as he falls in love with fellow activist Nathan and comes to terms with his own diagnosis and mortality. 120 BATTEMENTS is directed by Robin Campillo, who co-wrote 2008’s Palme d’Or-winning ENTRE LES MURS. With long scenes of discussion and collective action, this is an ensemble piece that honors and remembers a milestone of social activism. If that sounds dull, it isn’t: these are a colorful, funny, engaged bunch, and their humor lightens the film’s inevitable march toward death. (Dave Calhoun)
D: Valeska Grisebach, GER/A/BGR 2017 | 119 min, colour, OV
Custody of a white horse is one of several bones of contention between Bulgarian locals and German laborers in WESTERN, a dispute with a classic symbolic dimension: Does he who rides the white horse also get to be the good guy? That’s one of several oblique ways in which the eponymous genre bleeds into this quietly involving culture-clash drama, down to its lone-wolf protagonist: a mostly silent stranger whose incursions into the Bulgarian community set masculine tensions flaring on both sides. Meinhard is the newest member in a team of construction men, sent to a remote green patch of rural Bulgaria to build a water power plant. He’s an able, aloof worker less fazed than his colleagues about resistance from the local villagers. But cultural battles could easily erupt in this particular east-meets-west showdown. (Guy Lodge)
D: Amanda Kernell, SWE/NOR/DNK 2016 | 110 min, colour, OV with Geman subtitles
In the 1930s, Elle Marja is forced to leave her reindeer-breeding Sámi family to attend boarding school far away from home, a typical practice at that time. In the midst of adolescence, she is as strong-minded as she is rebellious and she knows how to hide her feelings all too well, even from herself. She strives for the approval of her teachers by outshining her classmates in adapting to Swedish culture, which she has been taught is far superior to her own. Yearning to fit into a society that is not truly open to welcoming her people, she suffers discrimination and psychological cruelty. Still, she would rather completely forsake her roots if it helped her to fit in. Amanda Kernell's outstanding debut feature offers an insightful commentary on the abuse imposed upon the Sámi by official institutions, subtly rendering a disturbing atmosphere which provokes empathetic indignation.
More information here.