Austria/Luxemburg/Germany

Director: Christian FROSCH

96 min. 2007 35mm, Colour,
with dialogue, German, English subtitled

Distributor: Claudia Rudolph

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Producer: Gabriele Kranzelbinder, Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu / Kranzelbinder Gabriele Production GmbH

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Screenplay: Christian Frosch

Cinematographer: Busso von Müller

Music: Andreas Ockert

Editor: Michael Palm

Cast:
Brigitte Hobmeier : Hannah
Johanna Wokalek : Anna
Xaver Hutter : Branco
Martin Wuttke : A. Hauks
Gabriel Barilly : Erik Lasalle
Erni Mangold : Mrs. Danneberg

  

A young woman is drawn into a mysterious interplay of dark forces in a monolithic, self-sufficient apartment-block system on the outskirts of time and place...
Never were apartment blocks more menacing, more inhabited by mystery, fear and control than the bright, white towers of “Neustadt, New Town, a self-sufficient "living machine" on the outskirts of place and time... With the help of a motherly friend and colleague, Hannah leaves her violent husband and moves to a higher, and thus socially superior, floor of her building. There her life quickly begins to derail. Why is she being observed by her new neighbors and spied upon by the internal security system? Why did the previous tenant commit suicide? Hannah begins having visions – or are they? – of shooting her husband. She feels that everyone, including her lover, is conspiring against her. Her only hope is her friendship with Anna, a kind of "negative" of Hannah, who rebels against the all-pervasive control in New Town. But as their two identities begin to merge, and the boundaries between manipulator and manipulated blur, they are swept up into a spiral of violence that threatens the very foundations of the "living machine" New Town...
Austrian-born maverick filmmaker Christian Frosch delivers a gripping conspiracy thriller, love story and parable about the fears and paranoia gnawing at the soul of modern-day society. The outstanding cast is headed by sensational young breakout talent Brigitte Hobmeier and DP Busso von Müller lends the film an ingeniously corresponding cinemascope vision.

 

short fragment 1

 

  

short fragment 2

Major screenings, presentations:
Toronto – Visions Programme 2007

Christian Frosch was born 1966 in Waidhofen/Th. (Austria) and lives in Berlin and Vienna.
He studied at the National German Film School at Berlin (DFFB), directed 10 short films, wrote the scripts for 4 realised feature films, and was awarded a.o. with the Carl Mayer Award in 1998 and 2005 and with the Script 99 Award for Familienbande. His first feature film as writer and director was Total Therapy, which was released to the Austrian cinemas in 2000. His second Feature K.aF.ka fragment (2002) won the Special Award of the Jury at Sochi Film Festival.

Bavaria Film International