THE TROUBLE WITH BEING BORN

A feature film by Sandra Wollner
AT/DE, 2020, 94 min, DCP, 2k, 4:3

Elli is an android and lives with a man she calls her father. Together they drift through the summer. During the day they swim in the pool and at night he takes her to bed. She shares his memories and anything else he programs her to recall. Memories that mean everything to him but nothing to her. Yet, one night she sets off into the woods following a fading echo. The story of a machine and the ghosts we all carry within us.

SALES/DISTRIBUTION

World Sales: Cercamon
Distributor AT: Filmdelights
Distributor DE: Eksystent
Distributor ES: Filmin
Distributor AU/NZ: Potential Films

FUNDERS/TV

BKA, ORF Film/Fernsehabkommen, Abteilung Kunst und Kultur Niederösterreich, CINE ART Steiermark, Stadt Wien MA7, SKE / austro mechana

CO-PRODUCERS

The Barricades
ZDF / Das kleine Fernsehspiel
Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg

CREDITS

Cast: Lena Watson, Dominik Warta, Jana McKinnon, Ingrid Burkhard, Simon Hatzl

Director: Sandra Wollner
Script: Sandra Wollner, Roderick Warich
Director of Photography: Timm Kröger
Editor: Hannes Bruun
Sound Design: Peter Kutin
Original Music: David Schweighart, Peter Kutin
Sound Recordist: Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer
Production Design: Pia Jaros
Make Up: Gaby Grünwald
Costume: Andrea Jirez
Commissioning Editor ZDF: Burkhard Althoff
Producers: Lixi Frank, David Bohun
Co-Producers: Andi G Hess, Astrid Schäfer, Viktoria Stolpe, Timm Kröger

AWARDS

German Film Critics Award 2022
Best Feature Film, Best Cinematography

Austrian Film Award 2021
Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Sound Design, Best Hair & Make-up

Diagonale 2021
VAM Preis für Außergewöhnliche Produktionsleistungen

Berlinale 2020
Spezialpreis der Jury, Encounters

Romy International Film Festival 2020
Bester Kinofilm, Akademiepreis

Diagonale 2020
Großer Diagonale Preis - Bester Spielfilm, Beste künstlerische Montage, Bestes Sounddesign Spielfilm, Diagonale Schauspielpreis

Wiener Filmpreis 2020
Spezialpreis der Jury

Bergen International 2020
Cinema Extraordinaire Award

First Steps 2020
Abendfüllender Spielfilm Preis

Trieste Science+Fiction Festival 2020
Méliès d'argent Award

Thomas Pluch Drehbuchpreis 2020
Spezialpreis der Jury

efm Berlinale 2020
Best Poster Design

New Horizons 2020
Special Mention 

FESTIVALS

PRESS

«Sandra Wollner's ability to work with time and space, with image and sound, is simply extraordinary. If she continues on this level, one day the Berlinale will be proud to say that they discovered a new star of world cinema.»
Bert Rebhandl, FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE

«Berlin Hidden Gem.»
Alex Ritman, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

«[...] the director joins the pantheon of uncompromisingly intellectual Austrian formalists like Ulrich Seidl and Michael Haneke. But in terms of daring, Wollner may even outstrip her countrymen: her film's eerie, gally surface conceals deep cuts into ontology, memory, identity and our increasingly boundary-obliterating relationship to tech. [...]»
Jessica Kiang, VARIETY

«What have I just seen? is a question you won't be able to shake off any time soon.»
Ekkehard Knörer, DIE TAGESZEITUNG

«Unsettling as any sci-fi tale should be.»
Carlo Chatrian, BERLINALE

«Possibly the best film of the Berlinale.»
Rüdiger Suchsland, ARTECHOCK FILMMAGAZIN

«A small sensation: a brave, polarsing, blend of drama, horror, science-fiction and psychological thriller - that simply cannot be pinned down to one genre. With incredible elegance, the film shows us what we want to reject - in a way we haven't seen for a very long time.»
Annett Scheffel, SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG

«This film - the highlight of the Encounters Competition - shows a director, who (with only her second feature film) enters a much bolder territory than most German-speaking directors are able to.» 
Hannah Pilarczyk, DER SPIEGEL

«Artifical intelligence has never felt as brutalising as it does in this second feature by Austrian filmmaker Sandra Wollner.»
Ela Bittencourt, SIGHT & SOUND

«A great director is born.»
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