In a suburb of Vienna during some hot summer days: A teacher who is in bondage to a sleazy pimp, a very importunate hitchhiker, a private detective on the run for some car vandals, a couple...
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A single woman in her 50's devotes her vacations to doing Catholic missionary work in Vienna, descending into violent self-punishment as part of her faith.
The final installment in Ulrich Seidl's Paradise trilogy, 'Paradise: Hope' tells the story of overweight thirteen-year-old Melanie and her first love. While her mother travels to Kenya ('... See full summary »
Director:
Ulrich Seidl
Stars:
Melanie Lenz,
Verena Lehbauer,
Joseph Lorenz
Teresa, a fifty-year-old Austrian mother, travels to the paradise of the beaches of Kenya, seeking out love from African boys. But she must confront the hard truth that on the beaches of Kenya, love is a business.
In conurbations where hundreds of thousands live alongside one another, in the era of a highly technological society, in which communication has never played such a significant role, man ... See full summary »
Director:
Ulrich Seidl
Stars:
Ernst Schönmann,
Franz Holzschuh,
Erich Wögerer
This is a film about the 'students ball' in Horn, the little Austrian town Seidl grew up. The movie portraits the young débutantes as well as the local notables, all of them eagerly involved in maintaining the stiff and stifling ritual.
Ulrich Seidls follow wealthy tourists going on safari to kill often endangered species. Some determinedly searching for trophies, others to enjoy. Even if every prey comes at a price., they... See full summary »
Main character of this movie is Rene Rupnik, a former math teacher. He is forty years old and lives together with his mother in a desolate block of flats. Ever since his early youth women ... See full summary »
Looks at two communities on either side of the Czech - Austrian border. There's an elderly man in Austria looking for a new wife, and he meets a lone single woman on the Czech side of the border.
Director:
Ulrich Seidl
Stars:
Paula Hutterová,
Vladimir Kundrát,
Rusena Machaloyá
In a suburb of Vienna during some hot summer days: A teacher who is in bondage to a sleazy pimp, a very importunate hitchhiker, a private detective on the run for some car vandals, a couple with a serious marriage problem and an old man, whose wife died long before on the search for some sexual entertainment live their lives while their lifelines cross from time to time.Written by
Moritz Muehlenhoff <jmm@inutil.org>
Every country which has a working film industry has some sane (and maybe some insane) artist which make movies that you can only completely understand when you're a part of this country. I guess Hundstage is such a movie.
You see the lowest level of Austria's society, dirty, disturbed, weird, hateful. But they still have enough money so they can afford tuned cars and big houses. And they are definitely doing a lot of strange things here which maybe seems for them 'normal' because they're doing it through their whole life. From a normal human viewpoint you can now easily follow the movie and be disgusted or fascinated and watch a fine piece of Austria's art movies.
But if you LIVE here and you know the people you see the characters in Hundstage as the tumor of the society. A society that is going more insane from day to day, creating their own rules that nobody else can understand, cave the social system from within. And you SEE the people. Sitting in the park, standing at the opposite street corner, queuing in the same line. Maybe you meet 'em in a bar or a disco you may visit. Maybe you even work with them in your job or they are living next to your house. You start to hate them without exactly knowing why. You'll try to get away - but you cannot. Maybe you'll end up like them. But it seems 'normal' for you because you're doing it through your whole life now...
Life isn't so bright though Austria is one of the richest countries in the world. It has beautiful people... but some are also ugly. There are a lot of hard working persons trying their best... but there are also some riding on the back of others and destroying everything that the folk of Austria has built up so far.
A very pessimistic movie.
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Every country which has a working film industry has some sane (and maybe some insane) artist which make movies that you can only completely understand when you're a part of this country. I guess Hundstage is such a movie.
You see the lowest level of Austria's society, dirty, disturbed, weird, hateful. But they still have enough money so they can afford tuned cars and big houses. And they are definitely doing a lot of strange things here which maybe seems for them 'normal' because they're doing it through their whole life. From a normal human viewpoint you can now easily follow the movie and be disgusted or fascinated and watch a fine piece of Austria's art movies.
But if you LIVE here and you know the people you see the characters in Hundstage as the tumor of the society. A society that is going more insane from day to day, creating their own rules that nobody else can understand, cave the social system from within. And you SEE the people. Sitting in the park, standing at the opposite street corner, queuing in the same line. Maybe you meet 'em in a bar or a disco you may visit. Maybe you even work with them in your job or they are living next to your house. You start to hate them without exactly knowing why. You'll try to get away - but you cannot. Maybe you'll end up like them. But it seems 'normal' for you because you're doing it through your whole life now...
Life isn't so bright though Austria is one of the richest countries in the world. It has beautiful people... but some are also ugly. There are a lot of hard working persons trying their best... but there are also some riding on the back of others and destroying everything that the folk of Austria has built up so far.
A very pessimistic movie.