Viennale Kicks Off With Cannes Winner ‘Of Gods and Men’

It’s an exhaustive look at cinema of the old, and the new in Austria’s capital. Starting today, and moving into November (3rd), Vienna celebrates almost two weeks’ worth of film culture via the Viennale (a.k.a. Vienna International Film Festival). Bookended by Xavier Beauvois’s Of Gods and Men, which took home the Grand Prix from this year’s Cannes Festival, and Pedro González-Rubio’s Alamar, Tiger Awardee in Rotterdam, the non-competitive fest tries to balance fiction, documentaries and short films in its main program.

World premieres of this edition stem from German primary rocks like Rudolf Thome (The Red Room) and Klaus Wyborny (Studies for the Decay of the West). Another highlight is the first showing of Houchang Allahyari’s fictionalised doc Die Verrueckte Welt der Ute Bock (The Crazy World of Ute Bock), portraying everyday life of a locally famed asylum helper. However, features like Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere or Francois Ozon’s Potiche are set to dominate audience interest, as well as the two versions of Carlos by Olivier Assayas. The French helmer is part of a guest list that most prominently includes Mike Leigh, Nicolas Philibert, John Turturro, Marco Bellocchio, and this year’s Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul who also created Viennale’s 2010 festival trailer (see directly below).  

Another visitor to Vienna will be Lou Reed, whose directorial debut Red Shirley is at the center of one of four Special Evenings. Specials and tributes are dedicated to the late French photographer William Lubtchansky, writer/director Larry Cohen, the experimental cinema of Austrian Siegfried A. Fruhauf, and Canadian helmer Denis Côté – the first ever festival retrospective for the director of Les Etats nordiques and Curling. Film Archive Austria’s section is devoted to the national silent cinema of the 1920s, while the big retrospective at Austrian Film Museum reexamines the work of one Maurice Schérer, who of course took his place in film history under a different name: Eric Rohmer.