Paulus Manker

Gegen das Schweigen - Machtmissbrauch bei Theater und Film

Insults, humiliation, violence, sexual assault - the world behind the camera and the scenes can be a nightmare for many theater and film professionals. Apparently there is a real climate of fear in some film and theater productions. Some directors, but also well-known actors, apparently abuse their power and treat those around them on set or on stage with contempt or even abuse. Individual cases have been known for years, including under #metoo. But are they really isolated cases? Or can directors and actors allow themselves anything because the system allows it? In their three-year research, the documentary filmmakers spoke to more than 200 film and theater professionals about the problems in their industry. How much responsibility do the alleged perpetrators bear for abuse of power and how much responsibility does the financiers, production companies, broadcasters and also the audience bear?

Schächten

In the late 1960s, when the young Jewish businessman’s son Victor Dessauer fails to secure just punishment for the Nazi concentration camp commandant who tortured his parents, he resolves to take the law into his own hands.

The Kangaroo Chronicles

A communist kangaroo moves in with an artist in Berlin.

The People vs. Fritz Bauer

It is the late 1950s. Flourishing under the economic miracle, Germany grows increasingly apathetic about confronting the horrors of its recent past. Nevertheless, Fritz Bauer doggedly devotes his energies to bringing the Third Reich to justice. One day Bauer receives a letter from Argentina, written by a man who is certain that his daughter is dating the son of Adolph Eichmann. Excited by the promising lead, and mistrustful of a corrupt judiciary system where Nazis still lurk, Bauer journeys to Jerusalem to seek alliance with Mossad, the Israeli secret service. To do so is treason — yet committing treason is the only way Bauer can serve his country.

Jack

Delving deep into the soul of one of Austria’s most infamous real-life convicts, Jack is a fascinating, unprejudiced look at the path to redemption and the obstacles that bar the way.

Burning Souls

A story about of one of the darkest periods in German history, an era in which the belief in occult forces was widespread. In Bamberg, witch hunts were fostered by a greedy and delusional Bishop Prince and reached their peak around 1630. This Bamberg ruler used the witch trials to purge his political enemies and enrich himself with their goods. Almost 1000 innocent men, women and children became his victims. BURNING SOULS deals with the era seen through the eyes of Johanna Wolff, a pharmacist's daughter, and the young physician Cornelius Weinmann. To save the innocent, he and a few courageous men revolt against the Bishop Prince.

Great

Did the Nazis ever see Charlie Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator'? Yugoslavia, 1942 - The young Serbian projectionist Nikola Radosevic decides to teach the German oppressors a lesson they won't forget. The beginning of a true and astonishing World War II resistance story.

Slumming

Two yuppies play mean pranks on those around them until one joke has unexpected consequences.

C(r)ook

A killer for the Russian Mafia in Vienna wants to retire and write a book about his passion - cooking. The mafia godfather suspects treason.

Die schöne Braut in Schwarz

Sylvia Rosch is a woman with dangerous obsessions. Camouflaged by perfectly rehearsed masquerades, she wages a merciless campaign of revenge. Anyone who gets too close will succumb to an insidious murder. The marriage swindler's preferred victims are men worth millions. Barbara Lahn and Til Wegner from the BKA are facing a huge challenge. They are supposed to collect evidence against the angel of death.

Wedding Shower

The film is based on the figure of the police inspector Simon Polt of the Austrian author Alfred Komarek.

King of Thieves

Two amateur circus kids from a poor Ukrainian village, ten-year-old Barbu and his older sister Mimma, are sold to a circus artist called Caruso who promises them a career in the West.

Wambo

A feature film about the life and death of the famous Bavarian actor Walter Sedlmayr, who was murdered in 1990 and who tried all his life to hide his homosexual tendencies from the public. The life story is told from the perspective of his professional environment and - sometimes in a documentary style - his fellow actors report on him. His sexual preferences in the BDSM area are also discussed.

Code Unknown

A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.

The Castle

Michael Haneke's adaptation of Franz Kafka's unfinished novel Das Schloss. K arrives in a remote village a stranger. In attempting to establish himself there, he enters the nightmarish world of the castle bureaucracy.

Brother of Sleep

In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.

Murderous Decisions

A thriller about a maniac murderer who to the outside world is a celebrity TV presenter. His beautiful assistant, a woman who has fallen off the career ladder, is terrorized by him. A job-hunting animation artist gets caught in the world of glitter and glamour of the TV industry. Drugs and promiscuity are omnipresent. The animation artist falls in love with the assistant and his love is returned; together they uncover the true identity of the killer. Murderous Decisions is a special experiment: an interactive zap-movie, leaving it up to the viewer whether they follow the story from the male or female perspective. The movie is one of a kind, actually being two movies aired simutaneously on separate TV channels and allowing the viewer to switch back and forth at will.

Weininger's Last Night

This film, dramatizing Weininger's life, is an adaptation of the 1982 play Soul of a Jew by Israeli writer Joshua Sobol. Weininger's last despondent hours are depicted in a dramatic furioso. His whole life passes by like distorted images in a mirror. The young genius fights a desperate battle against time, his fellow men - and against himself.

My Twentieth Century

A tale of twin girls, Dóra and Lili, who are born in 1880 Budapest at the same moment Thomas Edison presents his electric lightbulb to the world. The sisters are soon orphaned and separated in childhood, and follow different paths: one grows up to be a naïvely idealistic, bomb-toting anarchist, the other a pampered, hedonistic courtesan. Their paths cross once again on the Orient Express on New Year's Eve 1899...

Hanna Monster, Darling

Hanna and Leo are expecting a child. They live near Innsbruck where the mountains touch the sky and where absolute bliss seems to reign. But things turn out quite differently.

Nummer 11

A TV commercial is being prepared and shot. The product to be advertised is a laxative - a synonym for the majority of the acting persons. The director Gecko Bauch is surrounded by a number of friends and co-workers, who care much more about their own interests than their common work. Into this group, and very close to Gecko, comes Sophie, who actually has nothing to do with these people.

Julius Caesar

Jealous conspirators convince Caesar's friend Brutus to join their assassination plot against Caesar. To stop Caesar from gaining too much power, Brutus and the conspirators kill him on the Ides of March.

Sternberg - Shooting Star

Sternberg lands with his parachute in the bed of a stewardess, in the car of an airport employee and finally on a freeway service area. There he meets Harry. Harry is blind and he joins Sternberg who is looking for his Hedi. Together they land in the flat of the model married couple, Alf and Evy. With his appearance he upsets the day-to-day life of the couple.

The Distant Land

The Distant Land (German: Das weite Land) is a 1987 Austrian-German drama film directed by Luc Bondy. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Based on a play by Arthur Schnitzler, which is generally referred to in English as The Vast Domain and was also adapted by Tom Stoppard as Undiscovered Country.

Fraulein

A German woman and a former French prisoner of war live in 1950s Germany. Instead of playing a role in rebuilding her country, the heroine remains preoccupied with her personal affairs.

Who Was Edgar Allan?

A nihilistic art student meets the mysterious Edgar Allan at a coffee shop in Venice. The fascination for the older man soon turns into paranoia.

The Excluded

Die Ausgesperrten revolves around an unlikely group of 4 youths in Vienna who band together, each for different reasons, to mug people. Two are fraternal twins, the third a blue-collar worker, the fourth the privileged daughter of wealthy parents who "needs a little dirt in her life". The story provides penetrating insights into the Austria of the 50s, in which some enjoyed the benefits of the "Economic Miracle", while others were shut out. It repeatedly references Austria's Nazi past and the numerous ways in which it influences the present despite the conspiracy of silence which surrounds it.

Exit... But No Panic

A guy having sex with a woman on a rooftop – just to get her coffee-machine.