Free Radicals

Three stories by three directors, three journeys into the world of teenagers and countercultures. The stories are interlaced with each other. Characters with a small performance in one story will play a major part in one of the other two stories so we will learn more about them, on the other hand central characters appear again in the periphery of one of the other stories. It is done in a casual way, comparable with the situation in daily life when two friends are running into each other by chance. Petra and Nicole in their shrill world of brightness. Loafing around, bumming and teasing guys.

18th century Vienna. Maria Theresia von Paradis, a gifted piano player and close friend of Mozart's, lost her eye-sight as a child. Desperate to cure their talented daughter, the Paradis entrust Maria to Dr. Mesmer, a forward-thinking-physician who gives her the care and attention that she requires. With the doctor's innovative techniques of magnetism, Maria slowly recovers her sight. But this miracle comes at a price as the woman progressively starts to lose her gift for music.

4 directors decided to investigate why Jörg Haider's far right "Freedom Party" won the election in Austria in 1999.

Five former high school friends reunite for an evening of fun, remembrance and sadness in this Altmanesque portrait of female friendship. A look at how youthful idealism turns into adult pragmatism, and how one can fight such changes, from the director of Free Radicals.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

The personal journey of young Sita is not only an expedition into her family's burdened past during World War 2. It is also a journey to the abyss of modern European society, a trip which takes her from Berlin to Romania via Vienna and Warsaw - about losing one's homeland and discovering oneself, about hope and responsibility.

Vienna, 1995. Jasmin, Tamara, Valentin, Senad and Roman live near the northern border of Austria. Their lives repeatedly intersect and drift apart. The characters involved are young migrants from the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Poland and Austria itself. Strangers in a strange land, they feel a sense of loss in their new, temporary environment. The five-some meet and get close to each other, hopelessly clinging to friendships and relationships with no future. They frequent cafés and train stations dreaming of a better tomorrow. Often, they just fall back on the prospect of short-term affection in yet another doomed romantic or sexual encounter. Trying hard to suppress the memories of war and alienation, they try to find moral strength and warmth through one another.

Four months after the end of the war, four young people from Sarajevo share their experience, their thoughts and their hopes for the future, walking around the city in ruin.

To evade the incomprehensible world of adults seven-year-old Natascha creates her own world, influenced by her impressions of sexuality and religion. It is a world of mainly catholic imaginations and symbols - a world between frightening bogey men and flying Christ children.

Two girls in the disco give free rein to anger, nobody stops them.