Viennale-Trailer 2026: Rain Set Action

Kelly Reichardt’s contribution to the ongoing Viennale short-form anthology project shows three semi-complete iterations of what was first an outtake from THE MASTERMIND (2025) and has now become a trailer, illustrating the mutability of artistic creation. Reichardt chose this sequence to foreground the collective, and, we can add, magical nature of filmmaking. A crew member sprints through the background during the set-up. Craftspeople conjure up precipitation offscreen, and a man’s voice—presumably the first assistant director—calls out, “Here we go… ready…and, action!” But the transmogrifying action of this beguiling miniature pleasurably yields further interpretation based on collective cinematic memory: a smoking young woman with long hair enters a building through a revolving door, and immediately an older one exits, hair pinned up; both are dressed in period clothing. The coolness of the intermedial imagery evokes Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, and the knowledge of the heist that structures THE MASTERMIND, combined with the camera’s focus on dangling purses (one of them brown), suggests a film that was surely on Sherman’s mind: Alfred Hitchcock’s MARNIE (1964). (Mark Peranson)

With FOREVER…FOREVER (opening movie).
The trailer will be shown as a surprise repeatedly throughout the festival.

Kelly Reichardt (selection): RIVER OF GRASS (1994), OLD JOY (2006), WENDY AND LUCY (2008), MEEK’S CUTOFF (2010), NIGHT MOVES (2013), CERTAIN WOMEN (2016), FIRST COW (2019), SHOWING UP (2022), THE MASTERMIND (2025)