Viennale opens: 261 films in Vienna – including Bulgaria's Oscar entry
The Vienna film festival runs until 3 November. Its programme includes Valeska Grisebach's Cannes prize-winner 'The Dreamed Adventure', shot in Bulgaria.
Archive image · Photo: Bernhard Holub / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
The 64th Viennale opened in Vienna on 22 October. Until 3 November the festival is screening 261 films from 71 countries – from award-winning festival titles, documentaries and experimental films to retrospectives, including one on Robert Aldrich. It opened with 'Forever, Forever' by Austrian Johann Lurf: a 21-minute experimental film about the Ottenstein reservoir in the Waldviertel, shot over 22 months and projected in 70mm at the Gartenbaukino.
The programme also includes 'The Dreamed Adventure' by Valeska Grisebach, a German-French-Bulgarian-Austrian co-production. Shot entirely around Svilengrad with Bulgarian non-professional actors, the film won the Jury Prize at Cannes and is Bulgaria's submission for the Oscar for best international feature.
Other titles include Cristian Mungiu's Palme d'Or winner 'Fjord' and Ulrike Ottinger's 'Die Blutgräfin' starring Isabelle Huppert. The festival closes with 'The Loneliest Man in Town' by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, about Viennese blues musician Al Cook. Women directed 33 per cent of the films – a figure the festival itself calls insufficient, according to the Bulgarian news agency BTA.