The 11th Diagonale Festival of Austrian Films in the university city
of Graz (1-6 April 2008), the last to be programmed under a team
headed by Birgit Flos, celebrated at its outset the recent Oscar by
Stefan Ruzowitzky for Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters), an
Austrian-German coproduction. Even though this Academy Award winner
for Best Foreign Language Film had been screened at last year's
Diagonale, the rerun reminded a packed house that the writer-director
had previously been awarded the Thomas Pluch Screenplay Prize at the
2007 Diagonale. Further, as local critics commented, The
Counterfeiters as a psychological thriller offers a different bent on
the Holocaust theme. Set in the Sachsenhausen prison camp during the
last years of the Second World War, the focus in the film is on a
razor-sharp cerebral duel between an opposing pair of practiced
counterfeiters, one a thief with principles and the other a political
idealist. As evidenced in the book upon which the film is based, Adolf
Burger's The Devil's Workshop (written by the political idealist
portrayed in the film), their intellectual tug-of-war is mutually
based on life-sustaining moral principles. Karl Markovics, who plays
the principled thief Salomon Sorowitsch in The Counterfeiters, was on
hand in Graz to receive an Honorary Actor Award.

Two other internationally acclaimed Austrian coproductions were also
audience draws. In Ulrich Seidl's Import Export (Austria/France), an
entry in the competition at last year's Cannes film festival, the
director underscores the challenge facing new states in the European
Union as they deal with drugs, gambling, prostitution, gang beatings,
and the like. In the "import" portion of the film a nurse and mother
leaves the Ukraine for Vienna because she needs the money to support
her family back home. In the "export" segment an unemployed Viennese
security guard accepts a job delivering second-hand slot machines to
the Ukraine. Both experience the fate of the exploited. In Ulrike
Ottinger's documentary Prater (Austria/Germany), programmed in the
International Forum of New Cinema at last year's Berlinale, the rise
and fall of the world's oldest amusement park in Vienna is chronicled
with film footage from the golden past matched with shots and
interviews from the jaded present. The film springs to life when
quaint shots from the silent and early sound periods take the pulse of
a fevered public at rollercoaster rides, parachute jumps, spook
houses, tests of strength, dance contests, the giant Ferris Wheel, and
other sensational pleasures. Indeed, for amusement park devotees,
Prater is nothing short of a documentary gem.

In the past, attendance at the Diagonale necessitated a fluent
knowledge of German. This year, however, the festival opened its
portals in several sections for English subtitled films from festivals
in neighboring countries: Winterthur, a shorts festival in
Switzerland; Dokma, a documentary event in Slovenia; and Sarajevo in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, a festival renown for its regional competition.
Among the six program tribute to Sarajevo were Özer Kiziltan's
award-winning Takva – A Man's Fear of God (Turkey/Germany) and a
Diagonale Special devoted to Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic. In Takva
a simple man is chosen by an avaricious Sheikh to collect rent owed to
the sect. Slowly, as he makes the rounds in Istanbul, his personality
changes and he sinks into a despairing depression, for he cannot
reconcile his innate fear of God with the ways of the world. As for
the Jasmila Zbanic tribute, it opened with Grbavica, a
Bosnian-Austrian-German-Hungarian coproduction awarded the Golden Bear
at the 2006 Berlinale. A searing film of social conscience, Grbavica
(ironically subtitled The Land of My Dreams) depicts the agony of
Muslim women raped by Serb nationalists responsible for ethnic
cleansing in the Balkans during the four-year siege (1992-95) of
Sarajevo By contrast, and in a much lighter vein, Polona Sepe's Kamera
tukaj in tudi tece (Camera Here and Running) (Slovenia), an entry from
the Dokma documentary festival, chronicles the golden age of
big-screen international productions in the Slovenian republic of
former Yugoslavia. The legendary Peter Zobec – an assistant director
for crowd scenes hired by Sam Peckinpah as well as the production
manager for such prominent Yugoslav directors as Zika Pavlovic and
Krsto Papic – recalls the magic and joy of those postwar years, when a
small studio in the Slovenian harbor-town of Piran on the Adriatic
coast was known far and wide for production efficiency.

The highlight of the 2008 Diagonale was the archival rediscovery of
Austrian director Herbert Rappoport (1908-1983), a onetime assistant
to G.W. Pabst whose filmmaking career prospered in the Soviet Union
during and after the Stalinist era. Most cineastes are familiar with
Rappoport's screen adaptation (together with Adolf Minkin) of German
author Friedrich Wolf's Professor Mamlok (USSR, 1938). But not many in
the Graz audience knew much about his unique brand of Soviet musicals
produced at the Lenfilm Studios in Leningrad (today St. Petersburg),
particularly Muzykalnaya istoriya (A Musical Story) (1940), codirected
by Alexander Ivanovsky, and Cheremushkiy (Cherry Town) (1963).
Rappoport can also be credited with introducing the film noir genre to
Soviet cinema. In fact, his Dva bileta na dnevnoy seans (Two Tickets
for the Afternoon Show) (USSR, 1966) and Chernye suchari (Black
Zwieback) (USSR/GDR, 1971), both spy thrillers, enabled him to return
to East Germany for the latter production. According to program
moderators (Olaf Müller and Barbara Wurm) and Russian experts (Petr
Bagrov and Alexander Rappoport, the director's son), Herbert
Rappoport's mysterious death in 1983 has since been corrected from
reported heart failure to apparent murder by strangulation.

The Diagonale Prize for Best Feature Film was awarded to Götz
Spielmann's Revanche, a crime thriller also programmed in the Panorama
at this year's Berlinale. The story of a hardened jailbird with a soft
underbelly, his misguided love for a Ukrainian prostitute in a
Viennese bordello leads him to attempt a bank robbery on their behalf
to seek a better life. When the heist misfires and the girlfriend
dies, the tough is driven to seek revenge on the policeman who had
fired the fatal shot. Running at a slow pace of two hours, with family
twists along the way to add color and tension, Revanche benefits
mostly from Martin Gschlacht's tight camera work (he was also awarded
at the Diagonale). Unfortunately overlooked for an award, Nikolaus
Leytner's Ein halbes Leben (A Half Life) (Austria/Germany) is surely
the best Austrian production of the season. A Half Life features the
inimitable Josef Hader, one of Austria's and German cinema's great
actors, as a rapist murderer plagued by his conscience. Suspected by
the police for having raped and killed a young girl, he is also
pursued by the father of the slain girl over an agonizing 20 year
period. As luck would have it, the killer survives two court trials
for lack of evidence – until a DNA analysis finally opens the
courtroom doors once again and prompts in turn a burden-releasing
confession. When A Half Life premiered at the 2008 Diagonale, it was
given an enthusiastic reception by press and public. Well deserved,
too.

Diagonale Awards

Diagonale Main Award – Feature Film
Revanche, dir Götz Spielmann
Diagonale Main Award – Documentary Film
Halbes Leben (Half Life), dir Marko Doringer
City of Graz Award for Innovative Cinema – ex aequo
Running Sushi, dir Mara Mattuschka
Vertigo Rush, dir Johann Lurf

Graz-Seckau Diocese Church Award
livesafelyineurope, dir Emanuel Danesch
Land Steiermark Youth Jury Award for Best New Generation Film
Wir bitten Dich, verführe uns! (We Beg You to Seduce Us!), dir Carola Schmidt
Special Mention
tschuschen:power, dir Jakob M. Erwa

Awards for Cinematography
Feature Film
Martin Gschlacht, Revanche, dir Götz Spielmann
Documentary Film
Joerg Burger, Der Weg nach Mekka (The Way to Mecca), dir Georg Misch

Awards for Editing
Feature Film
Christof Schertenleib, Import Export, dir Ulrich Seidl
Documentary Film
Martin Hasenöhrl, drent und herent, dir Martin Hasenöhrl

Audience Award
Sneaker Stories, dir Katharina Weingartner

Carl Mayer Screenplay Award
Main Prize
Markus Mörth, Pony
Grant Prize
Dariusz Krzeczek, Martina Kudlacek

Thomas Pluch Screenplay Award
Ernst Gossner, South Of Pico, dir Ernst Gossner
Thomas Pluch Screenplay Grant Awards – ex aequo
Lukas Miko, Das gefrorene Meer (The Frozen Sea), dir Lukas Miko
Libertad Hackl, Lena Kammermeier, Bleiben will ich, wo ich nie gewesen
bin (I'll Stay Where I've Never Been Before), dir Libertad Hackl

Promotional Award for Cinema Art, Ministry for Education, Art and Culture
Peter Röhsler

Honorary Actors Awards
Karl Markovics
Ursula Strauss