East of War
1996 | 112 min | Documentary
The testimonies of former Wehrmacht soldiers collected by Ruth Beckermann are still horrifying today.
Hannes Heer
ActorFilms
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Towards Jerusalem
1990 | 85 min | Documentary
The film moves from the lights of Tel Aviv discos to the immigrant housing of Ethiopians to the burial site of Samuel the Prophet, capturing the voices and vistas of contemporary Israeli culture and politics.(National Center for Jewish Film) "An expressive overview of Israel in 1990" (Süddeutsche Zeitung) What became of the dream of a Jewish homeland? In this documentary road movie, Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann records the diverse views and activities of Israelis and Arabs as she travels ...
Homemad(e)
2001 | 85 min | Documentary
Acclaimed Austrian documentary director Ruth Beckermann portrays a dying culture of Viennese urban history. The entertaining as well as insightful doc was shown at Berlinale. The Marc-Aurel-Street in Vienna. The last Jewish shop owner in the former textile disctrict, the Iranian hotelier, the cafe Salzgries with its regular customers. From summer 1999 until spring 2000, Ruth Beckermann made little trips to explore her home district with the camera. The film is also a document about the political ...
An Iron Box
2018 | 102 min | Biography
The filmmaker Nils Olger suspects that his grandfather was involved in massacres in Italy during WWII. With the help of a few photos, he sets out in search of this family history. Olaf Jürgenssen, Nils Olger's grandfather, served as a medic in the SS at the end of the war. During the withdrawal from northern Italy, his unit committed a series of massacres on the civilian population. But Jürgenssen was also a photographer and he kept his negatives in an iron box. Olger uses the photographic negatives ...
Those Who Go Those Who Stay
2013 | 75 min | Documentary
Nonetheless, the analysis closes without conclusion: it is like an offer to her viewers to draw their own associations, their own connections. Beckermann's great strength becomes clear: the free, spontaneous leap from individuality to universality. "A grim ode to Europe" (indiewire) "Ein Film wie eine musikalische Komposition" (Jan Tabor) This film offers an intentionally unintentional gaze that allows for chance encounters, for stories and memories that lead Ruth Beckermann across Europe and ...
The Waldheim Waltz
2018 | 94 min | Documentary
Lies. Truth. Alternative Facts. This film analyses how the UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim’s wartime past was revealed by the World Jewish Congress. Ruth Beckermann documents the tangled web that ensnared former UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim when he concealed two years of his wartime biography. It shows the swift succession of new allegations by the World Jewish Congress against him, the denial by the Austrian political class, and the outbreak of antisemitism and patriotism which led to ...
The Dreamed Ones
2016 | 89 min | Documentary
The correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan forms the basis of the text. The story begins in Vienna in 1948, when she is 22 and he 27, and ends with Celan's suicide in 1971 in Paris. Two young actors, Anja Plaschg and Laurence Rupp, meet in a recording studio to read from their correspondence. The dramatically fluctuating feelings of the letters - between intoxication and fear of loss, delight and horror, closeness and strangeness - are passed on to the actors.
A Fleeting Passage To The Orient
1999 | 82 min | Biography
Rigorous and engrossing, Ruth Beckermann's documentary retraces the steps of Austria's restless "sad empress" Elizabeth during trips to Egypt in both 1885 and 1891. When the camera gazes from the deck of the ship towards the endless horizon of the Mediterranean, the image of a woman who travelled the globe without pause takes shape. Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, also gradually disappears from view, as it were: from the age of 30 she refused to be photographed.
Black Sun - Mythological Background of National Socialism
1998 | 95 min | Documentary
As early as the 1900s, numerous occult and neo-Germanic groups emerged in Germany and Austria, claiming the dominance of the "Aryan race" on the basis of misunderstood legends and symbols. Several Nazi celebrities found additional confirmation for their world view in this. By means of rhetoric, sacral architecture and spectacular mass stagings, such as torchlight marches and solstice bonfires, such pseudo-religious content was also sunk into the subconscious of the masses. The film's central anchor ...
Fritz Bauer - Death By Installments
2010 | 98 min | Biography
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Return to Vienna
1983 | 91 min | Documentary
“In my personal life I lived through different stages. There was one period determined by football, nothing but football; each Sunday we would go to see a match and I myself played in a team. Then came another period: politics. A very strong interest in politics and the attempt to understand this world that I only knew from party names so far. Contrary to today, people at the time had a very good feeling for who was a Jew. Today, with so few Jews around this is no longer so. Types like myself, with ...