Viennale announces packed line-up

by Bénédicte Prot

04/10/2007 - The 45th Viennale (October 19-31) yesterday revealed its programme, exhaustive as ever. This year, Austria’s largest international film event will welcome approximately 90,000 filmgoers and 700 accredited professionals to view 300 features, shorts and documentaries.

The packed line-up includes festival favourites such as Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days [trailer, film focus], alongside its Cannes competitors Persepolis [trailer, film focus] by Marjane Satrapi, And Along Come Tourists [trailer] by German helmer Robert Thalheim, Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park [trailer] (a French co-production) and Import Export [trailer] by Austrian director Ulrich Seidl.

Also lined up are Berlinale titles, including Jacques Rivette’s Don’t Touch the Axe [trailer] and European co-production and Silver Bear winner The Other [trailer] by Ariel Rotter, as well as Karlovy Vary’s Hotel Very Welcome, presented by its German director Sonja Heiss (see interview).

The programme also includes European features, such as French/Swiss production A Parting Shot [trailer, film focus] by Jeanne Waltz (who will present the film); The Visible and the Invisible by German director Rudolf Thome; Reclaim Your Brain [trailer] by talented Austrian director Hans Weingartner (The Edukators), who will come accompanied by lead actor Moritz Bleibtreu; and French titles A Girl Cut in Two [trailer] by veteran director Claude Chabrol, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s Actresses [trailer], Pascal Bonitzer’s Made in Paris [trailer] and Lady Chatterley [trailer] by Pascale Ferran, on whom the Viennale will hold a retrospective of six films she has written and/or directed.

The 54 documentaries selected include Elle s'appelle Sabine [trailer] by actress-turned-director Sandrine Bonnaire, The Monastery [trailer] by Danish director Pernille Rose Grønkjær and the remarkable German/Swiss experimental film Dust by Harmut Bitomsky.

The festival further offers tributes, concerts and discussions, a programme entitled Working Class Cinema in Austria, a Viennale “best of” and what promises to be a superb retrospective organised in co-operation with the Filmmuseum, which will be composed of 64 arthouse classics by directors such as Guy Debord, Buñuel, Godard, Orson Welles and Pasolini, Nanni Moretti, Chantal Akerman, Raul Ruiz, Chris Marker, and Huillet and Straub, among others.

(Translated from French)