Bruno Dallansky
The famous styrian writer Peter Rosegger was born on the 31st of July 1843 on the “Kluppeneggerhof” (N 47°29.715` E 015°37.779`). After having been an apprentice to the local tailor he tried to gain some education by himself during the years 1865 – 1869 but finally ended up attending the “Akademie für Handel und Industrie in Graz”. Due to scholarships he even was able to start his writing career during these years, so that in 1870 his first book of poems “Zither und Hackbrett”, written in styrian dialect, was published.
Cinematographer turned director (Xaver Schwarzenberger) has filmed a small, wintry story of epic human proportions. A young doctor (Hanno Poeschi) exiles himself to a remote Austrian village when he accidentally causes a death. Once at the village, winter sets in and against that harsh and poetic backdrop a rabies epidemic sweeps through the population. The doctor convinces people he is a biologist but then he treats someone bitten and gives his real profession away. As the epidemic raises questions of life and death, the doctor's mind is brought back to the death that caused his exile and he considers suicide for awhile. The same issues come up again when an enraged villager goes on a killing spree and in turn, is hunted by the citizens. Faced with the prevalence of death all around him, the doctor starts to gain some perspective on the personal experience that brought him here in the first place.
Alternating between early-1970's interviews with his wife, priest, and other villagers and re-enactments of his final months, the film follows Austrian peasant farmer Franz Jaegerstaetter's path to martyrdom under the Nazis. The first scene shows his execution, followed by a graveyard tableau in which Franz objects to his priest's praise for a fallen soldier's patriotism. Arguments between Franz and his priest and then with a bishop follow, with the clerics both insisting that he owes military service to his country and that he has no right to choose defiance and certain death. His wife Franziska, the priest, and other townspeople comment on his life.....
The son of an Argentine chemist travels to Vienna, to solve the murder of his father. Step by step, he realizes that his father was internationally entangled in secret service machinations and chemical weapon sales, and ends up in mortal danger himself. Meanwhile, he also realizes that there is no connection between his father's murderess and those dubious activities. Her motive for killing him goes back much futher, to a court hearing during the Third Reich...
In Spring of 1945, the Wehrmacht forces are weary from retreat, while the Allies are closing in. A single Austrian captain attempts to guide what is left of his platoon behind the Russian lines to surrender to the Americans. They take under their wing a young man with a severe disability. As the loyalty of his men is brought to the test, the captain grows closer to the boy who evokes a deep secret from his past in the Nazi Reich.
A teenager mysteriously disappears from a German boys' school. Also known by the title "School of Fear".
The life of the great composer, Ludwig Van Beethoven, dates back to his arrival in Vienna in 1792 as the composition of his Ninth Symphony. And we follow with passion the best moments of his life, as his rejection by the family of the only woman he loved deeply, or the beginning of his deafness that prevented him from hearing to ...
When the body of a postman is found on Lake Neusiedl, the investigation shows that it is probably a robbery, and several of the villagers fall into the circle of suspects: Five young men now need an alibi. Walter was with Elisabeth on the night of the murder, but cannot rely on her support. She is not only the sister of Stephan, who is also suspected, but also the fiancée of the gendarme who is leading the investigation into the case.
