Festival Films A-Z

Import Export

Cast

Ekaterina Rak, Paul Hofmann, Maria Hofstätter

Production

Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion GmbH
A-1090 Wien, Wasserburggasse 5/7
Tel.: + 43 1 310 28 24
Fax: + 43 1 319 56 64
E-Mail: office@ulrichseidl.com
Internet:
www.ulrichseidl.com

Camera

Ed Lachmann, Wolfgang Thaler

Cut

Christof Schertenleib

Worldsales

The Coproduction Office
Mommsenstraße 27
10629 Berlin
Tel.: +49 30 324 34 30 53
Fax: +49 30 323 23 20 91
E-Mail: info@thecopro.de

Distribution

Movienet Film GmbH Rosenheimer Straße 52
81669 München
Tel.: +49 89 48 95 30 51
Fax: +49 89 48 95 30 56
Internet:
www.movienetfilm.de

A 2007, Regie: Ulrich Seidl, dF, 136 min.

Synopsis

Import Export Olga and Paul represent two individual destinies and two opposing directions. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, life. Olga comes from Eastern Europe, where bitter poverty is the order of the day. Paul is from Western Europe, where unemployment does not necessarily mean hunger, but a personal crisis nonetheless: lack of orientation and a feeling of uselessness. In the East and in the West, respectively, the two protagonists are struggling to gain confidence in themselves, to find meaning in life. Both travel to a new country, where they are confronted with its abysses. The topics of Import Export are sex and death, living and dying, winners and losers, power and helplessness, and how to give the teeth of a stuffed fox a professional cleaning.

From an interview with Ulrich Seidl

Ed Lachman, one of the two cameramen with whom you made Import Export described you as a moral filmmaker, but not a moralistic one. Do you agree?

Seidl: I don't want to merely entertain people with my films, but touch them, perhaps even disturb them. My films are critical of society, not of individual people. And I have a vision of a life with dignity. If, beyond giving pleasure, a film is able to open up viewers to its connection with their own lives, then it has achieved a lot. I want the people in the cinema to be confronted with themselves.

You don't fit the mould of the classical, socially critical filmmaker. You show, you don't judge.

Seidl: I don't possess an ideology for improving the world. It's never about judging the individual. I try to cast a realistic gaze on life. I believe that reality touches all of us, with our fears and desires: the fear of death and the desire for love.

Import Export is a film that shocks, but it can also be seen as your most humanistic film to date. Have you grown wiser and more gentle?

Seidl: Wiser, I hope, but not more gentle. But all my films are the product of my humanistic world view - even if they do disturb, provoke and shock.

Biography

Good News - Von Kolporteuren, toten Hunden und anderen Wienern (1990), Mit Verlust ist zu rechnen (1992), Tierische Liebe (1995), Models (1998), Hundstage (2001), Jesus, Du weißt (2003), Import Export (2007)

Filmography

Dates

45 05.10.2007 20:00 CineCitta