Films by Alice Rohrwacher, André Siegers and Ludwig Wüst

September 10, 11, and 26 / October 3, 2014

The Premiere series, in which the Film Museum regularly presents important contemporary works for the first time in Vienna, starts with a bang in the new season with three guests and four screenings. On September 10 and 11, the German-born director Ludwig Wüst, whose work occupies a very distinct place in New Austrian Cinema, will present and speak about his two most recent films, Das Haus meines Vaters (My Father’s House, 2013) and Abschied (Farewell, 2014). Both works demonstrate Wüst's uncanny ability to create highly compact and emotionally demanding time-space experiences, using just a few (brilliant) actors and minimal budgets.

On September 26, one of the most outstanding films of the year receives its Vienna premiere at the Film Museum: La meraviglie (The Wonders), winner of the Grand Jury prize at Cannes, is the second work of Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher. With an enchanting ensemble of amateur and professsional actors (including her sister, Alba Rohrwacher, as well as Monica Bellucci) and a story about the precariously utopian life of a small family community on a remote farm in Umbria, Rohrwacher achieves a bravura balancing act between neo- and magic realism, in an almost documentary mode while at the same time touched by the magic of the country fair and the grossly manufactured "miracles" of modern mass culture.

Another highlight in the current cinema season will be shown on October 3. André Siegers' first film Souvenir (2014), justly celebrated at the Berlinale Forum earlier this year, is by all appearances a documentary. A German man, Alfred D., has travelled the world for 30 years as an ambassador of social democracy and in the process has accumulated 800 hours of filmed material that has now been edited by Siegers. But isn't this record of a life – including discussions with Robert McNamara and Helmut Schmidt, a return to Mr. D.’s childhood home, a cruise through the Arctic ice and a romance ending in tragedy – just as much a grandiose fiction?

All screenings will be followed by Q & As with the filmmakers.