Strange events happen in a small village in the north of Germany during the years before World War I, which seem to be ritual punishment. Who is responsible?
Director:
Michael Haneke
Stars:
Christian Friedel,
Ernst Jacobi,
Leonie Benesch
Georges and Anne are an octogenarian couple. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, also a musician, lives in Britain with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.
Two violent young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.
A 14-year-old video enthusiast is so caught up in film fantasy that he can no longer relate to the real world, to such an extent that he commits murder and records an on-camera confession for his parents.
A European family who plan on escaping to Australia, seem caught up in their daily routine, only troubled by minor incidents. However, behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, they are actually planning something sinister.
A young man harasses a homeless woman, another man protests, the police arrest both and the woman has to leave the country. What were their various story-lines leading up to this event?
Director:
Michael Haneke
Stars:
Juliette Binoche,
Thierry Neuvic,
Josef Bierbichler
When Anna and her family arrive at their holiday home, they find it occupied by strangers. This confrontation is just the beginning of a painful learning process.
Director:
Michael Haneke
Stars:
Isabelle Huppert,
Anaïs Demoustier,
Béatrice Dalle
Set in France, Georges is a TV Literary Reviewer and lives in a small yet modern town house with his wife Ann, a publisher and his young son Pierrot. They begin to receive video tapes through the post of their house and family, along side obscure child-like drawings. They visit the police with hope of aid to find the stalker, but as there is no direct threat, they refuse to help. As the tapes become more personal, Georges takes it upon himself to figure out who is putting through his family through such horror. A true Michael Haneke Classic. Written by
Jodie Norton
During the tape where Georges pulls up in his car and parks at night the headlights clearly cast a huge distinct shadow of the camera on the wall. See more »
Quotes
Georges Laurent:
Isn't it lonely, if you can't go out?
Georges's Mom:
Why? Are you less lonely because you can sit in the garden? Do you feel less lonely in the metro than at home? Well then! Anyway, I have my family friend... with remote control. Whenever they annoy me, I just shut them up.
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We are, yes, we're the ones who look without really seeing and Michael Heneke, the veteran young director knows it. Paranoia and responsibility in a film that is as irritating as it is brilliant. Even the opening credits, small writing while a camera, still, very still, stares at an upper, middle class abode. An intellectual Hitchcockian exercise by a genial director who seems, at times, is playing with himself. He probably is doing it knowing that we're looking and tests our endurance without caring, really, whether we're with him or against him. What he, I believe, wouldn't tolerate is our indifference but, there is no danger of that. Love and hate. Admiration and ridicule. He will inspire all of that, at the same time by some of us, all of us, one way or another. The performances are all wonderful and there is a marvelous moment with the great Annie Girardot.
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We are, yes, we're the ones who look without really seeing and Michael Heneke, the veteran young director knows it. Paranoia and responsibility in a film that is as irritating as it is brilliant. Even the opening credits, small writing while a camera, still, very still, stares at an upper, middle class abode. An intellectual Hitchcockian exercise by a genial director who seems, at times, is playing with himself. He probably is doing it knowing that we're looking and tests our endurance without caring, really, whether we're with him or against him. What he, I believe, wouldn't tolerate is our indifference but, there is no danger of that. Love and hate. Admiration and ridicule. He will inspire all of that, at the same time by some of us, all of us, one way or another. The performances are all wonderful and there is a marvelous moment with the great Annie Girardot.