I think the austrian movie industry is not very famous on the international market, perhaps not even in the german speaking market. While germany has got about ten times more inhabitants than Austria it is not very suprising that there is more money available to produce movies, and of course the amount of tv-stations (that produce movies) is a lot larger than in austria.

In my humble opinion there are just a few famous and really good Austrian movies, most of them featuring national cabaret artists (like “Muttertag”, “Indien”, “Freispiel”, …). Certainly there are some other great Austrian movies like “Böse Zellen“, but all in all these movies are more or less “Austrian flavoured”. I dont claim to know all of the Austrian movies, but from my point of view there are just too few movies that became internationally “famous” (where “Böse Zellen” already is one good example that became relatively famous).

A great “step in the right direction” is the movie “Cache” from Michael Haneke, but since it was produced in france and only(?) french actors are in it, it is not that a good example.

So far my unqualified perspective of the movie industry in Austria, but if you dive deeper into the Austrian movie scene there are some hidden pearls, some movies that don´t have this “Austrian touch” and are not only targeted to Austrian audience. Don´t get me wrong, i like Austria and i like Austrian movies, but i think there should also be Austrian productions that do not only aim for the national target group, and here are two of them:

Ainoa (http://www.ainoa.net)
Marco Kalantari, the producer and director, studied at the Vienna Film Academy and shot the whole movie in austria during three shooting-blocks. As he mentions in the making-of, a movie like this has never been made in austria before, namely a science fiction film of that kind.
This trailer is an amazing example of what can be done with the proper will, passion, and lots of work.
You should also check out the trailer to Marco´s short movie “Dreynschlag”, another great piece of work.

Septem (http://www.septem-derfilm.com)
Another great and promising movie is Septem. I don´t know that much about this film, but the trailer and the plot outline both look great.

Well, thats it so far, i´m really looking forward seeing this movies in cinema! I hope to see more projects like these in the future…

Tags: film