A 45-minute existential crisis with better cinematography than your entire life.
A movie about the possibility to be happy—or about the impossibility of the same. A young man interviews people on the street. He asks them about the substance of their lives in order to find answers for himself, but he cannot find any. Then, a young woman: after a couple of disappointments, she finds the happy side of life—she finds something like love. They meet each other…
Direction
Hausner's debut already shows her clinical eye for human fragility.
Cinematography
Static frames that trap characters like specimens under glass.
Writing
Dialogue so banal it becomes devastating—intentionally so.
Director
Jessica Hausner
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of 1990s Austrian cinema's 'comfortless' wave alongside Haneke and Seidl—Hausner would become its most humane practitioner.
Shot on 16mm with non-professional actors; Birgit Doll was Hausner's actual neighbor.
AT
