VIENNALE kicks off

The Viennale is Austria’s most prominent international film festival, with 96,000 viewers last year. Highlights of this year’s 300 carefully selected films are the boldly aesthetic Asiatic 3D genre; the Austrian premiere of the politically relevant Le dernier des injustes (The Last of the Unjust) a and the retrospective best flicks of Jerry Lewis.

The 51st edition of the festival will also offer a large selection of German films such as the world premiere of Kein großes Ding (No Big Deal) by Klaus Lemke and the film adaptation of the Robert Musil play Die Schwärmer (The Enthusiasts) by Johanna Pauline Maier.  Between Seville and Las Vegas, a compilation of five films by Spanish filmmaker Gonzalo García Pelayo presents folkloristic and erotic aspects of Southern Spain. Computer Chess, a satire on technology’s world takeover, by Andrew Bujalski, was called "a new Doctor Strangelove" (Nathan Renaud, Accréds).