Favoriten
2024 | 118 min | Documentary
FAVORITEN is a documentary about teaching, belonging and social change, as Ruth Beckermann follows children and their teacher in Vienna's schools.
Ruth Beckermann
DirectorBorn in Vienna in 1952, filmmaker Ruth Beckermann is a defining voice in Austrian documentary cinema. In her essayistic works, she often explores history, Jewish identity, and societal power structures. Her films are regularly screened at renowned international festivals and have received multiple awards. For instance, she received the Encounters Award at the Berlinale for *Mutzenbacher* (2022), where *The Waldheim Waltz* (2018) had already been awarded Best Documentary Film. Her film *Favoriten* also premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024.
Films
The Waldheim Waltz
2018 | 94 min | Documentary
This documentary tells the incredibly shocking story of how a Nazi officer became a top politician and UN Secretary General.
American Passages
2011 | 120 min | Documentary
An epic documentary panorama about a journey through the United States.
The Dreamed Ones
2016 | 89 min | Documentary
The film is about love and hate, about right and wrong words. At its centre are Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, who met in post-war Vienna.
East of War
1996 | 112 min | Documentary
The testimonies of former Wehrmacht soldiers collected by Ruth Beckermann are still horrifying today.
Homemad(e)
2001 | 85 min | Documentary
Acclaimed Austrian documentary director Ruth Beckermann portrays a dying culture of Viennese urban history.
Towards Jerusalem
1990 | 85 min | Documentary
Beckermann's subjects offer a dramatic range of candid opinions about Arab-Jewish relations, immigration, the intifada, religion, and the economy.
Those Who Go Those Who Stay
2013 | 75 min | Documentary
THOSE WHO GO THOSE WHO STAY is Ruth Beckermann's meta-film - an analysis of her own cinematic works, a kind of progress report.
The Paper Bridge
1987 | 92 min | Documentary
A journey through Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann's own family's history and at the same time, the story of Central Europe's Jews and of a region.
Return to Vienna
By Ruth Beckermann, Josef Aichholzer
1983 | 91 min | Documentary
Franz West (1909-85) remembers his youth in Vienna: the diverse Jewish population the Red Vienna labor movement and the rise of Austrofascism.
A Fleeting Passage To The Orient
1999 | 82 min | Biography
This captivating film shows the less-knon sides of the Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, aka Empress Sissi on her travels to Egypt in 1885 and 1891.
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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 ...
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 ...
A Loving Act
2023 | 78 min | Documentary
Budapest, spring 2020: Two people are confined to an apartment as the outside world comes to a standstill. Riccardo, a reporter, and Kata, a porn actress, spend the days of quarantine caught between uncertainty, closeness, and the question of how intimacy can survive under exceptional circumstances. What begins almost like a game soon turns into a shared project: they start filming their relationship – their conversations, their bodies, their routines. The camera becomes a constant presence, witnessing ...
East of War
1996 | 112 min | Documentary
Testimony by former Wehrmacht soldiers recorded by Ruth Beckermann remains horrifying today. A controversial photography exhibit about atrocities committed by the German army on the Eastern Front during World War II inspired Ruth Beckermann to interview soldiers. What are their experiences beyond the bounds of "normal" warfare. An uncompromising film on remembrance and oblivion. "Between interrogation and pity. I must keep a distanced view. How do you film enemies?" (Ruth Beckermann’s Shooting ...
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 ...
Bostik, La Bodega de D10S
2025 | 83 min | Documentary
In a modest shop in Naples, football becomes religion. “Bostik” is more than a simple tobacco and newsstand store – it has turned into a pilgrimage site for devotees of Diego Armando Maradona. Surrounded by faded newspaper clippings, memorabilia, and countless images of the legendary “D10S,” a private archive has taken shape, keeping the myth alive decades after his glory days. The shop owner has transformed his business into an unofficial shrine, built on passion and memory. For regulars and fans ...
Bürglkopf
2025 | 78 min | Documentary
Auf dem Bürglkopf in Tirol, 1.300 Meter über dem Meeresspiegel, befindet sich ein Rückkehrzentrum für Menschen im Asylverfahren. Abgeschieden in den Alpen sollen sie hier dazu bewegt werden, Österreich zu verlassen. Die Isolation des Ortes und die Konfrontation mit Rückkehrberatung prägen ihren Alltag. In dieser besonderen Umgebung entsteht ein Spannungsfeld zwischen den Bewohnerinnen des Zentrums, den Menschen aus der umliegenden Region und den Touristinnen, die die Alpenlandschaft als Erholungsraum ...
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.
Jaffa - The Orange's Clockwork
2009 | 87 min | Documentary
"A moving and critical, yet balanced, multi-layered political essay that unpeels the untold story of the world´s most famous fruit that originated in Palestine." (Aviva-Berlin.de) In his documentary, Eyal Sivan traces the orange-brand JAFFA using a unique composition of archival material. He shows old photos, early film-footage, commercials, political posters, and paintings of the Jaffa orange to Israeli and Palestinian intellectuals and to workers from the citrus industry. They remember, reflect ...
Becoming Outline
2024 | 70 min | Documentary
Without allowing the most personal aspects to devolve into narcissistic introspection, Becoming Outline develops a cinematic form that reflects on class, nation and gender as fundamental dimensions of lived experience, socialization and self-constitution. Starting from an autobiographical art project, Miriam Bajtala reconstructs her life through the floor plans of the eighteen apartments she has lived in. These spaces become a kind of spatial biography — a “curriculum vitae” shaped by migration, ...