A best-of selection of short films created as part of the 2022 media fresh AIR program.

Works by Fanni Futterknecht, Michelle Schmollgruber, Cosma Grosser and Markus Maicher.

Seven farmhands and maids inherit the farm of their slain master. For the big farmer Danninger it is soon clear: they have to leave again.

"Oscar"-winning director Stefan Ruzowitzky ("The Counterfeiters") reinvents the Heimatfilm with DIE SIEBTELBAUERN. "I don't want to break with the whole Heimatfilm tradition, but make a modern drama in this ambience." (Stefan Ruzowitzky)

Feature film, 1998, 35mm, 95 min

In a distant future, on a wild planet, lonely teenager Roxy frees a criminal buried in the sand. Only free again, the woman begins to spread fear and death. Roxy and her mother Zora are found guilty of this, banished from their community and sentenced to track down the murderess. So they begin to roam the fantastical and haunted realms of their polluted paradise.

Iwanted to shoot an ode to cinema and actresses, a unique and universal adventure that takes on the elements of the Western, the cruelty of old fairy tales and the lyricism of science fiction.

- Bertrand Mandico

FR-2021, 130 min, Scope 1:2.35, color, DCP 2K, 25fps, OmdU

Director: Andreas Gruber

Of 500 Soviet officers who refused to collaborate with the Wehrmacht and were awaiting execution in inhumane conditions in the Mauthausen concentration camp, 150 managed to escape. On the night of February 2, 1945, the SS issued an order to the population of the surrounding villages to participate in the search for the refugees. At dawn, a manhunt breaks out.

Feature film, 1994, 35mm, 106 min

MÄRZENGRUND is the true and touching story of young Elias, who in the late 1960s turns against the maxims of a profit-oriented society and opts for a radical life in harmony with nature.

The expectations of Elias are high: he is not only an excellent student, but also the son of the richest large farmers in the Zillertal. Soon he is to take over the farm and its possessions. But the more the 18-year-old tries to fulfill the role intended for him, the more he threatens to break. Elias slips into a depression that confines him to bed for several weeks. When he slowly regains his strength, his father sends him on a sabbatical to the Märzengrund, an alpine pasture area that Elias is supposed to take care of for a summer. But when his family comes to pick him up after six months, Elias refuses. He moves further up into the mountains, above the tree line, where wilderness and solitude await him. Elias develops an almost paradisiacal relationship with nature and animals. After forty years, a serious illness forces him back to civilization.

MÄRZENGRUND deals with the burning questions of our generation, especially today's youth: In which world do we want to live, which values do we want to align ourselves with, and what is the relationship between individual freedom and social adaptation?

Feature film, 110 min. 2022
Director: Adrian Goiginger

Riafn
by Hannes Lang
Documentary
D - 2019, 30 min, HD, color Color

RIAFN is a cinematic expedition into the sound space of the Alps
between artistic ideal and documentary reality.

______________________

The downfall of the alpine country
by Werner Pirchner & Christian Berger
Ö - 1974, 30 min

A bitterly wicked parody of alpine customs devised by Tyrolean composer and musician Werner Pirchner. "It is a disgrace, to say the least, what has been published here by young filmmakers and documentarians who obviously want to be modern... A shameless and hurtful caricature of everything that has endured so far." So much for the vice mayor of Innsbruck in 1974.

The Rocket Man
Max Valier: The dream of space

"The Rocket Man" tells the tragic and fantastic story of Max Valier, a South Tyrolean who caused an international sensation with spectacular rocket experiments in Germany in the 1920s. Without regard for his own existence and against all odds, Valier fought for the dream of reaching the far reaches of space and died at the age of 35 during a laboratory experiment. On the occasion of Valier's 125th birthday, filmmaker Thomas Hanifle goes in search of traces and asks himself: Was Max Valier an admirable visionary or an egoistic fanatic who even paved the way for rocket technology for the Nazis?

The Alps are not only a spectacular natural landscape in the heart of Europe, but also a habitat for 13 million people in eight countries, whose multitude of languages, dialects and ways of life reflect the cultural diversity of this unique region. In his cinema documentary ALPENLAND, Robert Schabus embarks with great empathy and a close look on a journey to mountain farms in Austria, small manufactories in the village of Premana in Italy or to well-known winter sports centers such as Méribel in France and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria. The idyll carries the seeds of its destruction. Tourism creates jobs and eats up nature, traffic cuts through the Alpine valleys, and climate change is particularly noticeable in the Alps. At the same time, there are people who have been shaped by the tradition of defying a harsh nature for centuries and who do not want to give up their habitat.

ALPENLAND tells the story of people whose perspectives on life between economy and ecology could not be more opposite - and who, despite difficult conditions, have a deep relationship with their homeland.

With little possessions, but with many hopes and even more trust in God, about 330 Tyroleans and 120 Rhinelanders emigrated in the middle of the 19th century into the jungle of Peru to build a new future in the promised region of Pozuzo.

The Innsbruck filmmaker Daniel Dlouhy got to know many different perceptions of home, identity and origin more than 10,000 kilometers away from Tyrol and in the documentary film something PARADISE let the Pozuzine people of today have their say. They talk about migration and mobility in Pozuzo, the Tyrolean heritage, about the experiences with the terror of the Sendero Luminoso in the 1990s, about social and economic conflicts and about the future hope of tourism, for which Tyrolean clichés are also gladly held up. The film illuminates the present of an almost forgotten microcosm - a possible paradise?

Peru/Austria 2013
Idea & Concept: Daniel Dlouhy & Daniela Atzl
Director: Daniel Dlouhy
Editing: Sebastian Longariva & Daniel Dlouhy
Sound design: Bertram Walser
Colorist: Mathias Helldoppler
Production: Bunny Beach Film

DCP
Color
84min
German-Spanish original version with subtitles

Michael Koch
Switzerland, Germany 2022
136 min
OmeUV'22

DRII WINTER is a visually powerful Greek tragedy in the Alpine region. Strictly framed images provide a stage that the amateur actors enter unselfconsciously. A chorus structures the story of the mountain woman Anna and her love for the taciturn Marco, who is looked at askance by the villagers because he comes from the lowlands and doesn't drink. The intimate happiness of the two is abruptly disturbed: a brain tumor takes away Marco's impulse control, his personality changes, and the relationship threatens to fail. The lovers lack words for their worries and feelings, but their gestures are of stirring, gentle tenderness.