Directing
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Dreams collide with daily routine: Wochenend deals with the subject of adolescence and captures a generation's awareness of life.
This film is based on the actual events referred to as the "Mühlviertler Hasenjagd" (Hare-hunt in the Mühlviertel) which occurred in February 1945 around the Mauthausen concentration camp. 500 Soviet officers form death block 20 attempt to escape, but only 150 of them actually succeed. Following the tally-ho of the SS, a barbaric manhunt begins. Only very few fugitives survive. With a lot of good luck, the two young officers Michail and Nikolai reach the Karner family's farm. Frau Karner persuades her husband to hide the two escapees.
Warm summer afternoons, concentrated on a group of young women and men on a weekend in the small town of Wels, form the setting for Andreas Gruber's diploma film, which was shot at the Vienna Film Academy and exclusively with amateur actors. The film primarily tells stories of adolescence, the basic tenor of which is already revealed in the film's title, through poses staged with attention to detail. The soundtrack provides the driving narrative force, not only expressing feelings and hopes, but also elegantly capturing a mood defined by waiting, while simultaneously archiving it.
Another one of those stories we hear almost every day: refugees are picked up on Austria's border after a dramatic chase. And then nothing more is heard of them. The problem is apparently resolved in the usual way, through incarceration and deportation. But it's different this time: the story continues in Ghana, where everything is suddenly turned upside down.
The semi-documentary film contains fictional scenes as well as archive footage of the life and work of the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Franz König (1905–2004).
When Johanna's blind grandmother Ruth tells her the secret about their Jewish past, the “sleeping dogs” of the family history awake.
Simon Granderath has been found dead in his appartment. His only daughter, Monika Besse, who lives in Luxembourg, arrives to arrange the funeral and settle his estate. She wishes to get back to Luxembourg and to her normal life as quickly as possible. However, she quickly realizes that in fact, she hardly knew her father, and tries to trace the various stages and encounters that made up his life. Much later, she realizes that the search for the identity of her father has actually become a search of her own identity – though still she believes she can get closer to her father after his death.