Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2018: #32. Ulrich Seidl’s Evil Games

Evil Games

Since premiering his masterpiece Paradise trilogy across 2012 and 2013, the Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl has returned to heavy documentary subjects with 2014’s In the Basement (read review), a rather droll exploration of Austrians and their private sexual proclivities, and this year’s excellent (and important) glance at unregulated big game hunting in Africa by tourists with Safari. He’s been working on a decades long project, a period piece known as Herr Grasl, but announced he was taking a break from securing major funding for this to focus on a smaller project, Evil Games, which tells the fraught reunion of two brothers following the death of their mother. Seidl’s partner Veronika Franz (who has come to prominence as a director following 2014’s Goodnight Mommy, which she co-directed with Severin Fiala) co-wrote the script and actors Michael Thomas and Georg Freidrich had been reported as being cast as the brothers.

Release Date/Prediction: We had high hopes Seidl would have had Evil Games ready for 2017 considering he hasn’t released a narrative feature since 2013’s Paradise: Hope. The film’s production team was reportedly scheduled to be stationed in Romania between April of 2017 and March of 2018, with some filming already completed in Germany. Considering Seidl’s methodical process, we’re thinking Venice 2018 if production is scheduled to trickle into next spring.