22.10.2026 – 03.11.2026
The Viennale is Austria’s most important international film event and, at the same time, one of the oldest and best-known festivals in the German-speaking world. The festival opens with Johann Lurf’s “Forever…Forever”, which condenses 22 months at the Ottenstein Reservoir into 21 minutes and is screened on 70-mm film. The closing film is “The Loneliest Man in Town” by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel. The duo is also the subject of the ninth volume in the Viennale book series “Textur”.
In “Halayon”, Avi Mograbi draws on footage from Saffuriyya, the village from which his friend Ali Al Azhari was expelled in 1948. Kamal Aljafari’s “Going Home” features images from Gaza shown on his parents’ television. Laura Poitras’ and Rachel Lauren Mueller’s “They’re Here” follows residents of Minneapolis as they organise protests against ICE raids during the freezing winter. Mohammad Rasoulof, who has been living in exile since 2024, portrays in “Sense of Water” an Iranian writer weighing up whether to return to his homeland and face a prison sentence. Bani Khoshnoudi’s “Elegy for the Forgotten, on an Endless War” brings together images of violence in Iran, from the war with Iraq to this year’s bomb attacks.
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s *South of Tehran*, co-directed with Jafar Panahi, will be screened before Mani Haghighi’s *I Deserve a Lover*. Several other Austrian filmmakers will also be presenting their successful festival entries: Sandra Wollner’s *Everytime*, Valeska Grisebach’s *The Dreamed Adventure*, Katharina Rabl’s *Memories of a Forest*, Andrina Mračnikar’s *Mila/Marija*, Sebastian Brameshuber’s *London* and Manuel Wetscher’s *Eklipse*. In the international section, a number of big names are eagerly awaited, including Albert Serra (*Sixteen Moments of My Life*), Angela Schanelec (*My Wife Cries*), Bruno Dumont (*Red Rocks*), Denis Côté (‘Nobody’s Violence’), Mariano Llinás (‘Life of Jorge Luis Borges’) and James Benning (‘Eight Bridges’). Ulrike Ottinger will be screening ‘Die Blutgräfin’ (The Blood Countess), starring Isabelle Huppert and Birgit Minichmayr in the lead roles. Volker Schlöndorff will present his film “Visitation” and, in a public discussion, look back on six decades as a director.
In the section showcasing the crème de la crème of the most prestigious festivals, the programme also includes This year’s trailer was created by Kelly Reichardt, who used scenes that did not make it into the film “The Mastermind”.
The monographs are dedicated to the American experimental filmmaker Phil Solomon and Vasko Pregelj, whose films from Yugoslav amateur film clubs were considered lost for 25 years. The ‘Cinematographies’ focus on the war correspondent and filmmaker Jocelyne Saab, as well as on Abbas Kiarostami’s early short films for children. The series ‘Alles bunt und wunderbar?’, organised in collaboration with Filmarchiv Austria, is devoted to Austrian cinema of the 1990s. The main retrospective, presented in collaboration with the Filmmuseum, focuses on the work of Robert Aldrich.
Viennale Film Festival 2026
22.10.2026 – 03.11.2026
various locations, Vienna
www.viennale.at
