FAVORITEN (Austria, 2024, 118′)

Tuesday September 30th, at 3 p.m., Cinema Massimo, Screen 2

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Internazionale title: Favoriten
Original title: Favoriten
Director: Ruth Beckermann
Screenplay: Ruth Beckermann, Elisabeth Menasse
Photography: Johannes Hammel
Editing: Dieter Pichler
Production: Ruth Beckermann Filmproduktion

An elementary class in Austria, attended by foreign students who struggle to speak proper German. The teacher of Turkish origins passionately carries out her job, puts the students at ease and involves them in the activities. Until she has to stop working to go on maternity leave and part ways with those children that have grown so fond of her.
Shot between Fall 2020 and Spring 2023 in Vienna’s biggest elementary school located in the working-class district of Favoriten, populated by families from the Balkans and Turkey, the film becomes the expression of a microcosm of today’s European society confronted with issues such as identity and immigration. An ode to childhood and education which invites the viewers to find their own path in complex social conditions.

Ruth Beckermann (Vienna, 1952), one of the most influential contemporary documentary makers at international level, studied Journalism and Art History in Vienna, Tel Aviv and New York. Her filmography started in 1977 with Arena Squatted , on the occupation of the Arena slaughterhouse in Vienna, and quickly became a reference point for observational documentary. In 1978 she co-founded the distribution company Filmladen. She was also the co-founder of the Association of Austrian Documentary Filmmakers.

Filmography (selection): Arena Squatted (co-directed by Josef Aichholzer and Franz Grafl, doc, 1977), Return to Vienna (doc, 1984), The Paper Bridge (doc, 1987), Toward Jerusalem (doc, 1991), East of War (doc, 1996), A Fleeting Passage to the Orient (doc, 1999), Homemad(e) (doc, 2001), Zorros Bar Mizwa (doc, 2006), American Passages (doc, 2011), Those Who Go Those Who Stay (doc, 2013), The Dreamed Ones (2016), The Waldheim Waltz (doc, 2018), Mutzenbacher (doc, 2022), Favoriten (doc, 2024).