Festival Awards

The jury was moved by this personal film, in which the filmmaker ruminates on his fears as he witnesses his mother’s gradual memory loss. Beautifully blending family archives with reenacted dreams, this intimate film interweaves a myriad of poetic forms and folk tales with a history of maternal mourning rituals. The 2022 Vienna Short Film Award goes to the young Qatari filmmaker Majid Al-Remaihi for his film And Then They Burn the Sea.

This small gem floored the jury with its irresistible charm. Set in Paradise, a man is desperately searching for his missing wife in a surreal and colorful world. The filmmakers’ seamless, seven-minute joie-de-vivre approach to cinema made this a unanimous choice for this year’s Jury Prize. The winners are Chloé Farr, Gabrielle Selnet, and Adam Sillard for Goodbye Jerome!

What at first seems like a collection of shaky home videos turns out to be the intimately relatable record of a father–daughter relationship. The film’s honesty brought truly appreciated laughter and tears to the jury’s screening room. A well-deserved special mention goes to How Do You Measure A Year? by Jay Rosenblatt.

For the meditative journey full of uncanny rituals and interrupted fantasies, making the viewer a voyeur who shouldn’t be there yet witness the terrific consequences of the characters’ mysterious relationships, the ASIFA Austria Award goes to Bird in the Peninsula by Atsushi Wada.

For the black humor expressed in bright colors, absurd rituals, and a sinking feeling that still leaves a place to hope for us to be together the moment it ends, the Jury Prize goes to Doom Cruise by Hannah Stragholz and Simon Steinhorst.

For the emotional impact expressed through a sensuous art design, the Honorable Mention goes to Impossible figures and other stories I by Marta Pajek.

Four locations, two days, the increasingly dire passage of time. What is it that’s encroaching on us? The monstrosity of having to head toward one’s predetermined hour of death? The earsplitting silence of all the people involved in a process riddled with rituals? We know little and cannot judge. The static shots raise questions: Has someone left society by his actions, or was he forsaken by society long ago? Is this a story about looking away or about silent protest? A formidable miniature about a country scarred by violence that sticks in our memory. The Austrian Short Film Award for Best Austrian Film goes to Will my parents come to see me by Mo Harawe.

A slide down a hole takes us to a place of tenderness and intimate encounters between a grandson and grandfather. With a distinctive style and memorable voices, we are drawn into the humanity of how experience and knowledge is shared between generations. The pubescent coming of age, with prolific body hair growth, is contrasted with hair loss and head bumps as two mole characters remind us that the cycle of life is a commitment to love and loss. For its ability to balance wit and humor with deep introspection, the Jury Prize for the Austrian Competition goes to Alexander Gratzer’s In The Upper Room.

The award for the Best Narrative Film in the Austrian Competition goes to Breeze by Anna Lehner. Of all the films we screened, this one made the best overall impression on us. Flora spends a weekend back home with her family but doesn’t even get a hug when she arrives and has to help her grandma make schnitzel right away. This scene also sees her little sister play the piano, and it was this melody and atmosphere that moved us deeply. The entire film runs the emotional gamut between beauty and alienation. Using quiet, gorgeous imagery, the film follows Flora’s clear, transformative character arc. Her emotional world is never entirely tangible but still relatable, which we find powerful. Along with the sister’s piano playing, we also find the choice of music for the dance sequence in the train station very good.

With this Honorable Mention we swing the spotlight on a wonderful actor who in turn must play a pugnacious yet, sadly, luckless actor. It’s an immense pleasure to witness this film putting all its trust in its characters and giving them room to breathe. Congratulations to director duo Leni Gruber and Alex Reinberg as well as star Marlene Hauser for their film Hollywood.

We often consider the boundaries between the intimate and the obscene to be clear-cut, but this music video, with its ambiguous title, suggests otherwise. While watching it, you partake in acts of intimate pleasure, and the composition (of image and music) makes you want to join in on this unconventional playground.

The 2022 Austrian Music Video Award goes to . . . Make Me Cry for On Bells by Matthew Gerges.

In this music video, we were struck by how the feel-good artistic expression can mislead us in the best possible way. Multiple layers of meaning converge in a homogenous style, political and urgent, unafraid to call injustice by its name and to do so with precision—to engage, to challenge, to channel the artist’s power for change.

We want to give a Special Mention to Borders by Nenda Neururer.

The female body as a bargaining chip, as a tool in an exploitative system that allows self-determination only within a capitalist logic of utilization. What sounds like a current political debate in the U.S. is respectfully and unobtrusively portrayed in this tender film about a young woman who leaves her home to make some quick money in the city. The excellent camerawork turns us into observers and virtually forces us to see what otherwise is given a blind eye. The Elfi Dassanowsky Award for Best Female Director goes to Chinese filmmaker Zou Jing’s debut, Lili Alone.

The jury’s decision pivots on the fact that the film deals with the subject of work on multiple levels. On the one hand, it foregrounds care and family work and shows, also with a critical eye, who is responsible for it, as if it goes without saying: It’s women, while the men are mostly off-camera or behind it—or, as it were, gainfully employed. The tasks yoked onto women often look like love—yet they are work, as the film clearly shows, not without biting irony. Moreover, the jury’s decision was influenced by the way the film expertly interleaves old amateur footage of leisure activities in the 1960s with the Covid-tinged reality of the present day and its effect on people’s lives and work routines. The Social Responsibility Award goes to Invisible Hands by Lia Sudermann and Simon Nagy.