19/06/2006

He is the director that Werner Herzog cites among his favourite ten filmmakers whom he would visit a second time in Europe: The Vienna-born Ulrich Seidl [author, director and producer of internationally award-winning documentaries Good News (1990), Animal Love (1995) and Models (1998), and also winner of the Jury Grand Prix at Venice 2001 for Dog Days] started shooting Import/Export this spring in Vienna and will continue in the Ukraine this autumn.

The film, scripted by Seidl and Veronika Franz, will be photographed by two talented DoPs: American Ed Lachman (The Virgin Suicides) and Wolfgang Thaler (Dog Days, Workingman's Death). Import/Export features a cast of both professional and amateur actors and tells the story of Olga, an unemployed Ukrainian nurse who tries her chances in the West, and Paul, from Vienna and also unemployed, who also heads westwards.

Using Austria as a base, the director’s aim is to show the situation throughout Western Europe, a "society that is finding it increasingly difficult to compete", but one that nonetheless seems like a paradise for Eastern Europeans until they actually go there and realise that this land of freedom is becoming less and less welcoming. In an interview published by the Austrian Film Commission, Seidl explains that he chose the Ukraine for story reasons but also because "social fracture is the most tangible" there.

Import/Export – the first production from Ulrich Seidl Film-Produktion (founded in 2003) – is the most expensive the director has ever made. The €2.1m film received funding from the Austrian and Ukrainian film institutes, Filmfonds Wien and the Niederösterreich region.

(Translated from French)