Best Austrian animation movies

Armageddon (2019)

Anton and Franz live together since the beginnings of 20th century. They talk about their difficulties of being vampires, since their first bite in 1938. Their inconsistent arguments recall those of normal human beings. And history repeat itself. As if that were not enough, they also doesn`t really like each other much.

Faust (2009)

Klitclique "Zu Zweit" (2020)

Staging macho "bromances" between men like Vladimir Poutine and Xin Junping, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, using G-udit and $chwanger's superimposed faces as they rap in their melancholy style.

Arcana (2011)

Visuals for Edgar Varèse’s Arcana. Performed by the Bruckner Orchestra Linz under the direction of Argentine conductor and composer Dante Anzolini.

Whistle Stop (2014)

"It had to be me."

Rats in the Walls (2021)

“Rats in the Walls” is a short animation that is inspired by one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most gripping horror tales. The film presents the story of a middle aged man who wakes up one night to horrific sounds coming from the walls of his own apartment. He believes the screeches to be the sound of rats but no one else will confirm his suspicion. In his search and difficulties in locating the source of these sounds, the protagonist is rattled by whether what is happening exists in his mind or in reality.

Glossary of Broken Dreams (2018)

Puppets! Pixels! Anime! Live action! Stock footage! Lumpennerd Johannes Grenzfurthner gives an ideotaining cinematic revue about important political concepts. Everyone is talking about freedom! Privacy! Identity! Resistance! The Market! The Left! But, yikes, Johannes can't tolerate ignorant and topically abusive comments on the "Internet" anymore! Supported by writer Ishan Raval, in this film, Johannes explains, re-evaluates, and sometimes sacrifices political golden calves of discourse. Not to be used with false consciousness or silicone-based lubricant.

Moomin and Midsummer Madness (2008)

After a volcanic eruption causes floods, members of the moomin family find refuge inside a floating theater.

A Game with Stones (1965)

A device consisting of a clock, a pendulum, a faucet and a bucket enacts a series of events whenever the clock chimes.

Picnic with Weismann (1968)

Various objects are having a sunny outing together in the nature.

Answering the Sun (2023)

Rainer Kohlberger is prepared to go far when it comes to the physical experiences he evokes with his work. Answering the Sun demands the utmost from its audience. The invitation is to squint our eyes and allow the most amazing trips to unfold – just like when we were children letting the sun come in. However, the work is simultaneously a 60-minute bombardment of coloured fields and a wall of sound, followed by a hallucinatory, silent inky-black sequence.

Wiener Wuast (2006)

A series of hand-drawn short animations are photographed in the hand of the artist as she travels to various locations in Vienna.

Time o´ the Signs (2020)

Digital time thieves from our epoch and their ongoing daily routines. How do we (not) want to live in a future society?

Dead Reckoning (2017)

A ride around Vienna’s Ringstrasse boulevard and then into the city, falling, eating, and finally ending up on the toilet. Death is always there, right in front of us.

Stampfer Dreams (2024)

STAMPFER DREAMS is a homage to the scientist Simon von Stampfer, who presented his invention of the Stroboscopic Discs in Vienna in 1833.

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The Electric Kiss (2024)

In Kohlberger’s second film that could be considered narrative driven, the artist fashions a dystopian fiction from the remnants of cinema’s past. Drawing on excerpts from obscure sci-fi films, The Electric Kiss imagines a world not unlike our own, in which people plug their brains into a kind of neuro-network that connects the whole of human consciousness. As cyberpunk imagery draped in VHS textures alternates with passages of prismatic visual noise (achieved, in trademark style, by feeding footage through self trained machine learning algorithms), a quasi-plot emerges: a man in a VR headset, literally and figuratively lost in space, subjects himself to a mysterious procedure to alleviate the ill effects of this new technology on the mind.

Parasitic Endeavours (2017)

A hilarious bouncy rubber ball of heads. Don’t try this at home – even if you can.

Monument Film (2012)

Arnulf Rainer—every which way but loose.

Not Even Nothing Can Be Free of Ghosts (2021)

Rainer Kohlberger’s abstract film was created entirely without a camera. Through digital algorithms, he precisely arranged a rhythm of light and shadow that pulsates off the screen into our physical space with blinding intensity. The presence of light is almost felt as we are sucked into the image to become its ghostly accomplice. As we leave the theatre, the optical vibrations continue to haunt us.

MeTube 3: August Sings "Una furtiva lagrima" (2020)

Part three of the trilogy, centred on the Swiss tenor August Schram, is now located in an opera house during a running performance of Donizetti's humorous melodrama "L'elisir d'amore" and furnished with a memorable cast of characters.

Applesauce (2019)

Two uniformed guards keep watch over a cave as animals carry on philosophical dialogues about important existential issues. Is it time to passionately devote yourself to reality? What about the perpetual reoccurrence of sameness? Meanwhile, the solution to one of the most essential problems is apparent: you just have to wash, peel, cut, and mash it. The apple. The serious practices of reality are calling.

In Her Boots (2019)

Hedi is experiencing strange things. While her granddaughter is visiting, she suddenly embarks on a hiking journey, to the deepest parts of the Alps, revealing the reason for her devoted attachment to her hiking shoes.

Kinderfilm (2023)

It's an ordinary day in the game GTA V – but the car-crowded streets are marked by a grave absence. Protagonist Edgar searches for clues, revealing the beautiful yet nightmarish nature of his reality.

Hardly Working (2022)

An ethnographic exploration of the work and daily life of non-player characters, the digital extras in video games. Their labor loops, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.

How to Disappear (2021)

Anti-war movie in the true sense of the word, searching for possibilities for peace in the most unlikely place of an online war game. It’s a tribute to disobedience and desertion — in both digital and physical-real warfare. Shot in the picturesque war landscapes of «Battlefield V», the hyperreal graphics become the backdrop for an essay-like narrative. The film revolves around the history of deserters — a part of human history, which has hardly been illuminated. Performances and creative interventions explore the scopes and limits of the audiovisual entertainment machine.

Baroque Statues (1974)

In an associative montage statues of saints in rigid and rapt poses are cross cut with those of real actors until the two can no longer be told apart. Gradually the real bodies break away from the constraints of their wooden models through increasingly improvised dance. A successful act of liberation from (Catholic) convention, which the material celebrates in an acstasy of multiple exposures and psychedelic colors.

26/71: Zeichenfilm – Balzac und das Auge Gottes (1971)

Zeichenfilm - Balzac oder das Auge Gottes is a play on the idea of trick film. And trick film it is. The 30-second work is shown twice in case the viewer missed something the first time: in crude hand-drawn animation Zeichenfilm ... evokes the scatological sado-masochistic actions and performances of Otto Muehl and Günter Brus which Kren filmed during his second period. In Zeichenfilm Balzac a male figure hangs himself, achieves a monstrous erection and ejaculates into a woman's mouth. She in turn hangs herself; he enters her vaginally then anally. Finally, she defecates on the left side of the frame wherein appears an eye of God while on the right in a cartoon box the words "Aber Otto" ("But Otto") materialize, a comic reference to Otto Muehl.

l'alfabeto delle cose piccole (2015)

The film is uncommonly poetic and refined. The pictures come from a book by Federica Pagnucco and Linda Wolfsgruber, realized with printed characters in wood and lead. An old printing tecnique, well blended with wood-printed shapes, which gives a special aura of magic to the book, and subsequently to its animated version, thanks to the participation of Thomas Renoldner and the evocative soundtrack by Peter Rosmanith. It is a precious film owing to the rare suspension of the atmosphere and time, actually fixed and focusing on small things, habits, interstices, in the end, worlds...

Johnny & Me - A Journey through Time with John Heartfield (2024)

At an exhibition, graphic designer Stefanie is thrilled by the work of John Heartfield, the inventor of political photomontage 100 years ago. While trying to understand his life on the run, she suddenly finds herself in Heartfield's studio.