Viennale launches 20 euro holiday pass for young audiences

The Viennale, Vienna’s international film festival, will offer a new 20 euro holiday pass for audiences aged 14 and over, ORF reported. The limited pass includes four films on four days and is intended to introduce young people to the diversity of cinema and the festival.

The 64th Viennale will take place from October 22 to November 3, with this year’s theme centred on the idea of the monster. The festival poster shows a North Pacific right whale from the 1794 book Geishi, or About Whales, by Naki Josuiken.

Festival director Eva Sangiorgi said the image created a “large space for imagination” and a kind of “expanded reality”. The monster, she said, was not presented as a threat but as a warning gaze that returns the viewer’s own.

International and Austrian films

Among the first highlights are Sandra Wollner’s Everytime, starring Birgit Minichmayr, and Valeska Grisebach’s co-production The Dreamed Adventure. Both films will be shown in Vienna for the first time after receiving recognition at international festivals.

Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel will present Wiener Blues: The Loneliest Man in Town. Avant-garde artist Ulrike Ottinger will show Die Blutgräfin, starring Isabelle Huppert, who is expected to attend in Vienna.

Austrian filmmakers Manuel Wetscher and Katarina Rabl will premiere their feature film debuts Eklipse and Erinnerungen eines Waldes. Directors including Angela Schanelec, Volker Schlöndorff, James Gray and Hamaguchi Ryusuke will also present their latest works.

The full festival programme will be announced on October 13. Further films and initial Oscar contenders are expected to join the programme after the Venice Film Festival begins on September 2.

New programme for young audiences

Because the Viennale coincides with the autumn school holidays this year, the festival is introducing the holiday pass for young people aged 14 and over. The pass and a companion pass for adults are available to book immediately.

The selected films by Dong Jie, Eva Trobisch, Eivind Landsvik and Kohei Kadowaki will introduce young audiences to different languages and cinematic forms, including video game aesthetics and animation. “Cinema is a tool for social interaction,” Sangiorgi said.

The Viennale Central will also return. The Funkhaus building on Argentinierstraße will host meetings, discussions, masterclasses, panel discussions, concerts and parties during the festival.

Retrospectives and special programmes

In cooperation with the Austrian Film Museum, the retrospective will explore the work of US director Robert Aldrich, who died in 1983. Almost his complete body of work will be shown in rare prints, including Vera Cruz, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and The Dirty Dozen. A book about Aldrich will also be published.

A special programme will focus on Slovenian filmmaker Vasko Pregelj and include the documentary Alpe Adria Underground! His films had long been considered lost.

The programme will also feature the experimental cinema of Phil Solomon and six works by Lebanese journalist and filmmaker Jocelyne Saab. Her Beirut Trilogy documented the Lebanese civil war from within during the 1970s, while other films recorded upheaval in the Middle East. Sangiorgi said Saab’s films had gained new urgency.