29/03/2022 - Besides picking up recent festival hits such as Sonne, Rimini and Great Freedom, the Austrian gathering is also showcasing new titles focusing on society and longing

Sticking to its proven formula of showing “the whole spectrum of cinematic storytelling, and making space for numerous encounters between filmmakers and the audience”, Austria’s Diagonale has officially announced its selection. Marking the 25^th anniversary of the festival in its home base of Graz, the festival is aiming to make it a festive occasion, with several historical specials.

Taking place from 5-10 April, the 2022 Diagonale will showcase 113 Austrian fiction features, documentaries, shorts, animations and experimental films. The common theme running through the oeuvres is an exploration of society and longing, as festival co-directors Sebastian Höglinger and Peter Schernhuber explained. “In search of little paradises, cinema leads from universal teenage bedrooms to Rimini and Kurdistan. From the Alps to the streets of New York. From inhospitable mountain heights to the Chamber of Labour in Vienna.” With a watchful eye on current political and social developments, the selection presents an invitation to think differently in a present that is becoming ever more complex.

The festival will open with the Austrian premiere of Kurdwin Ayub's competition movie Sonne [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kurdwin Ayub
film profile] on 5 April. The gala premiere of Ulrich Seidl's Rimini [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ulrich Seidl
film profile] will take place the following day. Further titles in competition are Luzifer [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Peter Brunner
film profile] by Peter Brunner, Great Freedom [+see also:
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interview: Sebastian Meise
film profile] by Sebastian Meise and Masking Threshold by Johannes Grenzfurthner. Gerald Igor Hauzenberger takes on the coronavirus demonstrations in his documentary Denn sie wissen, was sie tun, while Elena Wolff confronts patriarchal structures in her queer docu-fiction Para:dies. Sabine Derflinger’s Alice Schwarzer delves into the life of the feminist icon of the same name.

Outside of the competition, Pierre Crom’s Signs of War talks about the ongoing war in Ukraine, which started in 2014, and A Jewish Life [+see also:
film review
interview: Christian Krönes and Floria…
film profile] by Christian Krönes, Florian Weigensamer, Christian Kermer and Roland Schrotthofer is an eyewitness account of the horrors of the Holocaust. Manu Luksch’s Sing and Cry, Cry and Sing concentrates on a seemingly arbitrary arrest and denial of rights in Abu Dhabi, while Andrina Mračnikar’s Disappearing [+see also:
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film profile] documents the vanishing of the minority language of Slovenian in Carinthia.

Further programme highlights are a collection of oeuvres by editor Dieter Pichler, amongst them For the Many – The Vienna Chamber of Labour [+see also:
film review
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film profile], shown recently at the Berlinale, and Moneyboys [+see also:
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interview: CB Yi
film profile]. Adrian Goiginger returns after The Best of All Worlds [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] with his new movie Märzengrund [+see also:
film review
film profile], in which Johannes Krisch plays a hermit in the Austrian Alps. The historical special “Rausch” will be presenting both versions of Funny Games by Michael Haneke. Another historical special dubbed “Come and Shoot in Thaliwood” homes in on films shot in Styria between 1947 and 1953, amongst them the Berlinale Golden Bear winner Four in a Jeep by Leopold Lindtberg and Elizabeth Montagu. Another retrospective is dedicated to the work of Austrian-Italian filmmaking duo Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel.

The programme, which will naturally take into account all applicable COVID-19 precautions, will allow for up to five film screenings per day in different cinemas, starting at standardised show times. FFP2 masks are mandatory in the entire vicinity of the cinemas and at all Diagonale 2022 events. Tickets are available from 30 March onwards at the festival centre in Kunsthaus Graz and at Schubert Kino, as well as online at diagonale.at.