Four Walls For a Future

A house has been flooded and is covered in mud. The tower in the activist camp is burning. A mannequin’s cardiac massage is a rehearsal for survival. A real-life survivor tells us in detail about his illegal border crossing in the back of a truck. Insecurity can be sensed in all four of these Austrian films, whether in personal experiences or in political responsibilities. Creating stable conditions is not easy. And to cater to their longing for a future, the protagonists stand up for a more climate-friendly lifestyle or bravely venture forth into a new life full of hope. (Doris Bauer - Vienna Shorts)

Saving Some Random Insignificant Stories

Anna Vasof | Duration 14’

A seemingly simple but multilayered work about memory, loss and how we deal with the past. The starting point was a flood, which left her parents’ house a muddy mess; two days later the director was able to enter and survey the damage, examining and musing over the water-damaged fragments of a life.

OCCUPIED – Lobau stays!

Matteo Molina | Duration 29' 52"

This 30-min cinéma vérité documentary is about climate activists that occupied several construction sites in Vienna, Austria for almost a year to stop the construction of two highways, crossing the nature reserve Lobau. The documentary gives an unfiltered view on what the daily life of an activist looks like and what few individuals can achieve in an extreme situation like an occupation.

Those Next to Us

Bernhard Hetzenauer | Duration 30'

On July 22nd, 2017 in San Antonio, Texas, the police found a truck in a Walmart parking lot with 39 illegal immigrants. A tractor had been transporting them undetected from the border town of Laredo to San Antonio. Because the cooling system inside the truck failed, resulting in extreme heat, eight people died during the transport, and two others succumbed to dehydration in the hospital. Those Next to Us traces the journey of one of the survivors from the transport, Germán López Rosales, from Mexico to San Antonio.

Surfacing Images

Tara Najd Ahmadi | Duration 5'

Surfacing Images is an experimental documentary about film preservation and the destiny of images that are left on their own. Through a phone conversation between a women’s rights activist and a former political prisoner, as they discuss from the works of filmmakers Dušan Makavejev and Bojana Marijan to the films of the 1979 Revolution in Iran and the videos of the Iranian Women’s uprising, this film portrays the irresistible urge of images to resurface and be seen.