Navigator Film

This cinematic portrait shows the Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl at work. The much-discussed ‘Seidl method’ is conveyed here vividly and directly: The camera watches over Seidl’s shoulder during the filming of his new production IM KELLER, and observes him at the rehearsals for his latest theatre production ‘Böse Buben / Fiese Männer’. The film paints the picture of a fascinating and exceptional artist using a combination of extensive interviews and excerpts from earlier works.

Sandra Hüller portrays Ingeborg Bachmann on an imaginary day in Rome. Regina Schilling’s hybrid film weaves together reenactments, archival footage, and Bachmann’s own writings into a portrait that offers a refreshing new perspective on the author and positions her writings as a reference point in current debates on gender relations and power.

Director Thomas Heise picks up the biographical pieces left by his family, and composes an epic picture of four generations of his family, of a country, of a century.

This feature documentary portrays one of the most important museums in the world, the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien. It presents a unique look behind the scenes of this fascinating institution and encounters a number of charismatic protagonists and their working fields unfolding the museum’s special world – as an art institution as well a vehicle for state representation.

Documentary about the life of avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, who led the independent film movement of the 1940s.

This film journeys deep into the heart of Austria’s favorite daily newspaper, the Kronen Zeitung, the most widely-read paper per capita in the world. The “Krone’s” 2.7 million readers represent 43% of the Austrian press market. A reflection of the Austrian soul, this newspaper serves as a prism through which we can understand the rise of the populist Right in this country and examine the dangerous flirtation between media and politics.

The documentary drama offers a fresh and surprising take on the story of Bruce Reynolds, Ronnie Biggs, and the rest of the gang.

The simple staple bread has become a branded product with an increasing number of varieties and providers. The film provides authentic impressions in today’s world of bread. We encounter small craft bakers as well as corporate CEOs whose professional work is our daily bread and ask the question: how do you see the future of our bread? And: what are we actually eating?

Who was Helene Weigel? Using impressive archive material, the film follows the convinced communist, acting icon, and free spirit from her early days in theater to her escape from the Nazi regime to the founding and management of the Berliner Ensemble. The result is a powerful portrait that finally puts the “woman at Brecht's side” in the spotlight.

Based on Samuel R. Delany’s short novel ‘Aye, and Gomorrah...’, where the sci-fi premise of radiation-resistant state-neutered space travellers allows the author to explore androgyny, sexual identity, etc. Hammel uses Delany’s story to create a spookily beautiful world where asexual bodies live in the contradiction between their unarousable loneliness and desire for intimacy and contact.

At the Natural History Museum in Vienna, everything that is found on earth and in outer space and that humans can get their hands on, is collected, archived, and studied in the name of evolutionary research. Archiv der Zukunft captures the aesthetic appeal of the natural-history collection and its working process, illuminating the mammoth project of knowledge preservation and production hidden behind the building’s imperial façade.

In Comparison revisits issues explored in the director's 2007 two channel installation Comparison Via a Third. Spanning continents and cultures, the film focuses on the brick in its many contexts, from the collective efforts of a community building a clinic in Burkina Faso, through semi industrialized moldings in India, to industrial production lines in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. Through its notable structure and its captivating rhythms, In Comparison presents various methods of labor production, allowing for an assessment that changes with every layer and goes well beyond a simple binary divide.

"Ceija Stojka" is a portrait of 64-year-old Austrian Rom Ceija Stojka, who, after a nomadic childhood, settled in Vienna many years ago. In the recent past, Ceija Stojka’s fame as an author, painter and singer has spread outside Austria. She represents the opening of Rom and Sinti society to the world of the "gadje." This process and all the difficulties it involves is unique in the history of the Rom in Central Europe. The central theme of this documentary is the fusion of two extremely different worlds in this fascinating woman. Beginning with Ceija Stojka’s present life, her biography is reconstructed in this film portrait. At the same time, a critical chronology of images portrays the common associations with the "gypsy," examples of which pervade Ceija Stojka’s life. A comprehensive consideration of the gypsy’s image, from romanticized projections to images of exclusion, discrimination and destruction, and finally the present ambivalent relationship between Rom and non-Rom.

The film presents artists from the Sinti and Roma minority who shape the trauma of persecution and very personal experiences in their works.

It is one thing to survive the Holocaust, but quite another to deal with the lasting impact of this experience. This film portrait of Ruth Klüger, an American literary scholar from Vienna, deals with these issues by revisiting four significant places in her life: Vienna, California, Göttingen and Israel. Ruth Klüger also shares her thoughts on very personal topics: her childhood in anti-Jewish Vienna, her life in the States, her motherhood of two American sons and the culture of commemoration.

In 1942 Anna and Wasyl Major were sent from Galicia to Lungau and forced to work on farms. Only after the war's end brother and sister heard from each other. Both are staying in Austria and hard work on other people's farms still shapes their life.

The documentary highlights day-to-day life in a boarding school named Zuoz. Here, high in the Swiss mountains, the heirs of rich and influential families are locked up and expected to perform. Director Daniella Marxer spent her youth in such an institution. At Zuoz, individuality is neither tolerated nor of interest. There are very few deviations from the rules; the system has to work perfectly. Rebellion is not tolerated, and if you don't submit, you will immediately be expelled.

Against the background of current Austrian politics, the film reconstructs the history of the Carinthian minority conflict. The focus of this documentary is the eventful 1970s, when a young generation of Carinthia's Slovenes took up the fight for their rights laid down in Austria's State Treaty of 1955. With Haider as provincial governor, it is a fight fought until today.