Teresas Körper at Top Kino
- The file
- The practical details Claire checked before this went into the index.
- When
- 29 September 2026 – 8 October 2026
- Where
- Rahlgasse 1, 1060 Wien
- Price
- check website
- Documentary-fiction hybrid
- Austrian debut
- German with English subtitles
- 76 min
Magdalena Chmielewska's debut is built on a simple, radical premise: film your own mother's suffering, without flinching. Teresa has lived for years with chronic back pain. The film follows three women — Teresa, Chmielewska, and her sister — as they navigate that weight together: the physical reality, the psychological toll, the way pain gets tangled up with family history and inherited trauma.
The form is restless. Documentary sequences give way to fictionalized memory, ritual, and something closer to abstraction. Chmielewska doesn't resolve the pain or offer comfort — she just witnesses it, carefully, and lets the form shift to match what the moment requires.
The film won Best Director at Max Ophüls Prize and the Jury Special Prize for Screenplay at Diagonale 2026. It's the kind of intimate, body-centred work that cinema needs more of.
More in On Screen
WAX & GOLD at Österreichisches Filmmuseum
- When
- 5 October 2026
- Where
- 1st · Innere Stadt
Ruth Beckermann's WAX & GOLD follows the Vienna-born filmmaker to the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa—built by Emperor Haile Selassie as a monument to African modernization—where she unravels Ethiopia's layered history through archive footage, lobby conversations, and her own reflections as a European woman in Africa. The title refers to an Ethiopian literary technique of saying the opposite of what you mean, a metaphor Beckermann applies to the slipperiness of historical truth, colonial legacy, and the gap between image and reality. Beckermann is one of Austria's most decorated documentary filmmakers; Waldheims Walzer won the Berlinale Documentary Award and was Austria's Oscar entry. WAX & GOLD premiered as a Berlinale Special in February 2026 to strong reviews. This is a single screening at the Filmmuseum on October 5 at 20:30 in the Unsichtbares Kino—the intimate setting gives this essay film exactly the contemplative space it deserves.
Read the note →Subarnarekha at Österreichisches Filmmuseum
- When
- 13 September 2026 – 5 October 2026
- Where
- 1st · Innere Stadt
Ritwik Ghatak's *Subarnarekha* (1962) is the final film in his Partition trilogy. It follows a Hindu refugee from East Bengal trying to rebuild his life on the banks of the river Subarnarekha in West Bengal, only for history's violence to catch up with him again. It is one of the most devastating films ever made about displacement, and one of the least-seen: Ghatak was a contemporary of Satyajit Ray but worked in the shadows, his raw, operatic style too unruly for mainstream Indian cinema. This screening at the Österreichisches Filmmuseum is part of the RISE UP! Film – Form – Freedom retrospective (running through 21 October). The 13 September screening comes with an introduction by Elisabeth Streit — a rare chance to see a restored print of a film that shaped generations of South Asian filmmakers. The cinema is in the 1st district, in the Albertina building on Augustinerstraße. For anyone in Vienna who cares about the politics of belonging and the long aftermath of partition, the screening is worth the journey. Check the Filmmuseum website for ticket prices and exact screening times.
Read the note →The Early Spring of Chinese Cinema 1922–1964 at Österreichisches Filmmuseum
- When
- 1 October 2026 – 22 October 2026
- Where
- 1st · Innere Stadt
Thirteen films spanning four decades of Chinese cinema, from the 1922 silent comedy Laborer's Love to the 1964 drama Two Stage Sisters, screened at the Österreichisches Filmmuseum. The retrospective traces Shanghai's modernist film culture through revolution, war, and political upheaval — featuring Ruan Lingyu's performance in The Goddess (1934), Fei Mu's Spring in a Small Town (1948), and the epic Spring River Flows East (1947), which drew larger audiences in China than Gone with the Wind. All prints come from the China Film Archive. Screenings run through October 22 at the Unsichtbares Kino, Augustinerstraße 1 (Albertina building), 1010 Wien.
Read the note →