OPENING FILMS E-CUT FOR THE DIRECTOR COMPETITION NON-COMPETITION SPECIAL SCREENING EXTREME-SHORT FILM ACADEMY IN YEONGDEUNGPO KIDS SESIFF 90SECONDS COMPETITION 90 SECONDS INTERNATIONAL SPECIAL SCREENING

Austria Focus2 : Master Class

Magdalena Chmielewska is a Vienna-based film director and screenwriter schooled at the Vienna Institute of Film and Television at the University of Music and Performing Arts. The film program presented in the context of the masterclass provides insights into the young director's diverse oeuvre. The short fiction film “Frühlingswunder/Spring Miracle” depicts the survival strategies of three female prisoners. In this early work, shot on analogue film, the story revolves around a strong female character haunted by her past - of this many more will follow in Chmielewska’s later works. The music video "Gretchen am Spinnrad/Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel“ is a dream-like visual reinterpretation of the classical music piece of the same title by Franz Schubert. It was a commissioned work supervised by Michael Haneke for the Austrian State Broadcasting Corporation (ORF). The medium long feature film "Am Himmel/Heaven’s Meadow" features the haunting presence of Maria Spanring as a young woman radically performing her psychological and physical autonomy to regain her strength after an assault. Chmielewska and Spanring achieve a rare symbiosis of performance and visuality which expands the intensity of the film far beyond what is visible onscreen. In Chmielewska's current film "Lullaby" the seventeen-year-old insomniac Eva does everything to stay the night at other people’s houses where she quietly watches others sleep. As she staggers sleeplessly through the nights, Eva takes us to the flip side of the everyday life. Eva's challenging situation causes those around her to turn more and more away from her.

In Heaven’s Meadow

Director. Magdalena CHMIELEWSKA

Austria | 2018 | 29'51'' | German | Fiction | Color

It is night in Heaven Meadow, on the outskirts of Vienna. Injured and barefoot, Maya runs back home, to the city center. The next day, she spontaneous...

Margarete at the Spinning wheel

Director. Magdalena CHMIELEWSKA

Austria | 2016 | 6'38'' | German | Fiction | Color

What is pure imagination and what is reality? The dream-like portrayals Gretchen’s spinning and brooding in her love to Faust make it nearly impossibl...

Lullaby

Director. Magdalena CHMIELEWSKA

Austria | 2022 | 21'18'' | German | Fiction | Color

Seventeen-year-old Eva simply cannot sleep. In an Austrian province, where she lives with her father, her insomnia has become an unbearable interplay ...

Spring Miracle

Director. Magdalena CHMIELEWSKA

Austria | 2014 | 14'14'' | German | Fiction | B&W

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