Silk dresses promised, locked doors delivered — Vienna's most scandalous trial you've never heard of.
In the spring of 1902, Viennese working-class daughter Marie König runs away from her beating father and is lured into a high-class brothel by an agent. Instead of the promised self-determined life "with horse-drawn carriage rides and silk dresses", she experiences closed doors, violence and exploitation. Only after years of agony does Marie confide in the journalist Emil Bader, who makes the conditions in the brothel public and takes the owner, Regine Riehl, to court.
Acting
Maria Hofstätter's madam — charming, terrifying, utterly believable monster.
Production
Meticulous 1902 Vienna recreation that reeks of gaslight and moral rot.
Writing
Courtroom dialogue pulled from actual transcripts — truth stranger than fiction.
Director
Stefan Ludwig
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Director Stefan Ludwig spent years in Austrian archives to reconstruct Marie's testimony word-for-word from court records thought destroyed in WWII.
The 1902 trial briefly made international headlines, then vanished — this film resurrects a case that helped shape modern Austrian trafficking law without ever naming its victims.
No ratings yet
Sign in to join the discussion — comments are spoiler-gated to your watch progress.
Discussion starters
AT
