A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life...
Direction
Seidl's static tableaux—humiliation as architecture.
Acting
Rak's silent resilience vs. Hofmann's crumbling bravado.
Cinematography
Fluorescent nursing homes and grey Austrian sprawl.
Director
Ulrich Seidl
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Seidl cast mostly non-professionals found in actual nursing homes and border towns; Ekateryna Rak was a real nurse he discovered in Ukraine.
Released months before the 2008 financial crash, it now reads as prophetic about EU labor precarity and the invisible economy of care work.
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