Woody Allen's back with Rifkin's Festival

Fellow movie buffs,

Let’s start the new year with an Austrian premiere and with that on a sarcastically funny note. Woody Allen’s 49th feature film is a homage to the multi-facetted history of cinema itself as well as a bitter sweet satire on the hurdles of long term love in the early 21st century, all against the backdrop of the glamorous setting of film industry itself: Mort Rifkin, a snobby elderly film critic from New York played by the Woody Allen veteran Wallace Shawn, is telling his therapist about recent developments in his life. In the recount, he's accompanying his much younger wife Sue to a film festival in San Sebastián, where she encounters a passionate liaison with a much younger man. Mort's inner thoughts causes him to have nightmares inspired by well-known black and white cinematic classics like Citizen Kane, Breathless, Jules and Jim, Wild Strawberries and 8½. So yes, you might want to read this as a multi-facetted movie about movies and the superficial business surrounding it. (A short introductory lecture before the film starts should give us a hint or two on that.) But you might as well sit back, relax and enjoy the ride through a charmingly hilarious comedy about marital angst. Nothing wrong with that!

Protected content in the entrance hall to pick up the tickets and might have a drink afterwards to share our thoughts on all of this.