Viennale 2009: Opening and Closing Film

La Pivellina by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel

The opening film of the Viennale 2009 is La Pivellina by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel. Thus, the Vienna film festival will be opened for the first time in its history with an Austrian production. The film had its much acclaimed international premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Following their documentary Babooska, in which they followed a family of circus artists throughout Italy, La Pivellina is the first feature film by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, realized with amateur actors. The center of the story is an abandoned little girl called “La Pivellina,” who is found and taken in by a family of circus artists. La Pivellina is an unsentimental film about moral courage and solidarity on the fringes of society.

The directors and actors will be present at the gala screening of the film on October 22 in Vienna’s Gartenbaukino. In addition to a number of other festival guests, we are also happy to welcome the actress Tilda Swinton, to whom the Viennale dedicates a tribute this year, on the opening evening of the festival.

A Serious Man by Ethan and Joel Coen

As closing film of the festival on November 4, the Viennale will present the Austrian premiere of the latest work by the brothers Ethan and Joel Coen, A Serious Man. Cast with largely unknown actors, it ranks among one of the best films by the Coen brothers in years. Set in 1967, in a small town in the American Midwest, A Serious Man is a comedy about a Jewish middle-class family, filmed in the absurd, tragicomical style characteristic of earlier works by the Coen brothers.