Nearly 125 years after her assassination, the Empress Elisabeth of Austria — or Sisi to her enduring cultists — continues to inspire a veritable industry of portraiture in Europe: In the last year alone, a novel, two TV series (one of them a glossy Netflix affair) and two feature films have been dedicated to the tightly corseted royal icon. Viewers outside the Continental sphere of Sisi-mania may only have registered one of those films, Marie Kreutzer’s chic, subversive anti-biopic “Corsage,” which might make the second, German director Frauke Finsterwalder’s lush, irreverent “Sisi & I,” seem to them a too-soon spare — coincidentally repeating several tricks from Kreutzer’s anachronistic playbook with its modern feminist inflections, contemporary soundtrack cues and sensational fashions, albeit with plenty of its own panache.
That unfortunate timing, combined with the absence of a Vicky Krieps-style crossover arthouse star, may cost “Sisi & I” some distributor interest outside...
That unfortunate timing, combined with the absence of a Vicky Krieps-style crossover arthouse star, may cost “Sisi & I” some distributor interest outside...
- 3/12/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Arriving on DVD without having experienced a Us theatrical release, The Dark Valley toured several smaller film festivals after premiering a year ago at the Berlin International Film Festival. Multiple category winner at both the German Film and Bavarian Film Awards, with a stop at Karlovy Vary and a late 2014 North American stint, which included programming in the mini German Currents events in Los Angeles, it’s unfortunate the title didn’t receive a wider platform considering its rather curious elements.
Selected as Austria’s entry for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar submission, this is perhaps director Andreas Prochaska’s most accomplished narrative effort, as he’s generally steeped in television or pulpy genre. His latest, a by-the-numbers Western, captures a rather poetic ambience, even as it manages to neglect both its protagonist and rather garish details that skews the film into horror film territory. UK star Sam Riley...
Selected as Austria’s entry for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar submission, this is perhaps director Andreas Prochaska’s most accomplished narrative effort, as he’s generally steeped in television or pulpy genre. His latest, a by-the-numbers Western, captures a rather poetic ambience, even as it manages to neglect both its protagonist and rather garish details that skews the film into horror film territory. UK star Sam Riley...
- 1/20/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance: Prochaska’s Grimly Pleasing Revenge Yarn
Selected as Austria’s entry for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar submission, The Dark Valley is perhaps director Andreas Prochaska’s most accomplished narrative effort, as he’s generally steeped in television or pulpy genre. His latest, a by-the-numbers Western, captures a rather poetic ambience, even as it manages to neglect both its protagonist and rather garish details that skews the film into horror film territory. UK star Sam Riley headlines the feature to grant it an even more hybridized feel of this adaptation of Thomas Willmann’s novel.
In the late 19th century, a mysterious stranger, Grieder (Riley) rides into an Austrian mountain village. The people are unaccustomed to strangers, isolated high above everyone in the mountains. A photographer, his reasons for staying seem unclear, but he befriends a young woman, Luzi (Paula Beer) and her widowed...
Selected as Austria’s entry for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar submission, The Dark Valley is perhaps director Andreas Prochaska’s most accomplished narrative effort, as he’s generally steeped in television or pulpy genre. His latest, a by-the-numbers Western, captures a rather poetic ambience, even as it manages to neglect both its protagonist and rather garish details that skews the film into horror film territory. UK star Sam Riley headlines the feature to grant it an even more hybridized feel of this adaptation of Thomas Willmann’s novel.
In the late 19th century, a mysterious stranger, Grieder (Riley) rides into an Austrian mountain village. The people are unaccustomed to strangers, isolated high above everyone in the mountains. A photographer, his reasons for staying seem unclear, but he befriends a young woman, Luzi (Paula Beer) and her widowed...
- 10/22/2014
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
The Golden Lola for best feature film went to veteran director Edgar Reitz’s Home From Home - Chronicle of a Vision at the German Film Awards.Scroll down for full list of winners
The black-and-white epic, set in a fictitious village in Germany’s Hunsrück region in the mid-19th century, also received awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay (shared with co-author Gert Heidenreich) after being nominated by the members of the German Film Academy in a total of six categories.
The co-production with Margaret Ménégoz’s Les Films du Losange is handled internationally by Arri Media Worldsales and was released theatrically in Germany by Concorde Filmverleih.
The prizes were handed out at the 64th annual film awards, held in Berlin.
Austrian accent to ceremony
The night belonged to Austrian film-maker Andreas Prochaska and his producers Helmut Grasser of Allegro Film and Stefan Arndt of X Filme Creative Pool with their Alpine western The Dark...
The black-and-white epic, set in a fictitious village in Germany’s Hunsrück region in the mid-19th century, also received awards for Best Director and Best Screenplay (shared with co-author Gert Heidenreich) after being nominated by the members of the German Film Academy in a total of six categories.
The co-production with Margaret Ménégoz’s Les Films du Losange is handled internationally by Arri Media Worldsales and was released theatrically in Germany by Concorde Filmverleih.
The prizes were handed out at the 64th annual film awards, held in Berlin.
Austrian accent to ceremony
The night belonged to Austrian film-maker Andreas Prochaska and his producers Helmut Grasser of Allegro Film and Stefan Arndt of X Filme Creative Pool with their Alpine western The Dark...
- 5/10/2014
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
A stranger rides into an isolated hardscrabble town, embarks on a personal quest for bloody revenge and along the way becomes the townspeople's champion: so far, so every Western ever made. But the big twist here is that everyone's speaking German, even Sam Riley who plays the film's hero, and the mountains that hem in the small community are distinctly Alpine. Welcome to "The Dark Valley" from director Andreas Prochaska, playing this week at the Berlin Film Festival, which in transposing to rural Austria a story that might usually play out in Tombstone or some logging town in Colorado, may be pretty much the first attempt at a "schnitzel Western" that we've seen. Of course the clean, cinematic lines of the genre lend themselves to cross-cultural hybridization with often intriguing results, and initially it seems like this production has got a great deal right: a brooding atmosphere of suspicion and menace,...
- 2/10/2014
- by Jessica Kiang
- The Playlist
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