The Movie Import/Export at Festival du Nouveau cinema

I saw Ulrich Seidl’s new movie Import/Export at Festival du Nouveau Cinema, from October 10th to 21, 2007. It plays in Austria and Eastern Europe, like Ukraine. “A nurse from the Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason.” The photography reveals a strong documentary style. It shows every scene the way is, nothing seems to be arranged. The poverty in the east looks beautiful throughout the images.

It is a movie with many contrasts, playing on different levels. Sometimes it is brutal and aggressive, sometimes soft. Seidl’s actors are often autodidacts. Some keep their real first names for the role they play. He uses the same actors of previous movies, giving them a different role. The script does not follow the traditional filmmaking; there is no typical plot and dissolution of it. It is just a fragment of a story, which starts and ends in some point. A great movie!