The Fatherless

Die Vaterlosen

(Austria, 2011, 104 mins)

North American Premiere

Producers: Robert Buchschwenter, Alexander Glehr, Franz Novotny, Ursula Wolschlager
Screenwriter: Marie Kreutzer
Cinematographer: Leena Koppe
Editor: Ulrike Kofler
Cast: Andreas Kiendl, Andrea Wenzl, Emily Cox, Philipp Hochmair
Music: David Herbenstreit

In a large, run-down house in the idyllic Austrian countryside—which, back in the ’80s, was the site of a sexually liberated commune—Hans, the charismatic former commune leader, dies, attended by his oldest son, who never got the approval he craved. In writer-director Marie Kreutzer's amazingly assured first film, Hans' four adult children—one of whom, Kyra, has not seen her siblings in 23 years—reunite for his funeral and thrash out their complicated and conflicting feelings about their childhoods, uncovering buried secrets. With novelistic richness, Kreutzer's drama examines the fallout from a failed utopian dream and the consequences of unbridled freedom.

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