World Film Report Austria: La Pivellina Slowly Concluding Award-Winning Year

Austria Film Scene: Local

The Diagonale Festival is over and that means the Austrian Film Prize for Best Feature Film was handed to Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s La Pivellina – the portrait has been on a successful run picking up several festival awards and special mentions (see trailer). Hana, dul, sed … by Brigitte Weich and Karin Macher won Best Documentary. The doc is about three female North Korean soccer players and their life after they missed the qualification for the Olympic Games. Andreas Lust and Franziska Weisz won Best Actor/Actress for The Robber. Kick Off by Hüseyin Tabak won the Audience Award and the youth Jury Award. The film is centered around three players of the Austrian National Team for the homeless soccer World Cup and their struggle to get back into society (German-language trailer) – the film was released last month.

Pepperminta by Pipilotti Rist is an Austrian/Swiss Co-Production which started it’s Austrian theatrical run a month ago. It already has been to a few festivals including Sundance.

Stefan Ruzowitzky, the director of the Oscar-winning The Counterfeiters, who is currently directing Opera (Freischuetz, seems to be reasonably well received) in Vienna said that the possibility for directing The Last Voyage of Demeter is as high, but not a sure thing considering that the only reason why the information about the movie was released is because his production company thought it would be a good strategy.

Austria Film Scene: Abroad
Cannes was the lieu for two Austrian co-productions. Tender Son – The Frankenstein Project by Kornél Mundruczó is an Austrian/Hungarian/German co-production and ran in the Main Competition. It is about a who boy returns home from the institution where he grew up, but finds he is not welcome there. He fights to win the love of his family but ends up committing acts with dire consequences.

Adrienn Pál by Ágnes Kocsis is an Austrian/Hungarian/French/Dutch co-Production and it was selected in the Un Certain Regard cateogry. The film is about a nurse who works in the terminal ward of a hospital. One day a old women by the name of Adrienn Pál is admitted which is the name of her best in school and she goes on a journey to search for her.

The White Ribbon took home 10 Lolas, including Best Movie, Best Screenplay, Best Directing and Best Cinematography (Christian Berger) at the German Film Awards. Birgit Minichmayr was nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in Everyone Else, which is currently touring the US, but didn’t win the prize.

Currently a few Austrian Movies are having a “successful” run abroad. The White Ribbon has been screened for about 11 weeks in the US and 20 other countries. North Face (Nordwand) started it’s US run 7 weeks ago. Revanche (nominated at the Oscars 09 for Best Foreign Language Film) by Götz Spielmann is currently playing in Russia and seems to be very well received.