Film Academy Vienna’s “Werkschau”, a showcase event that gives its students the opportunity to present their projects to a wide audience on a big screen, takes place once each year. The Gartenbaukino, the Stadtkino Wien, and the mdw’s own Art House Cinema treat the general public to a multifaceted three-day programme comprised of feature-length and short films by Film Academy students from various degree programmes and semesters. The Werkschau’s 2024 edition wowed over 2,500 viewers with its 31 films, and 2025 will see the event celebrate ten years of existence.
Cordula Rieger, an eighth-semester BA student in the Directing programme, premièred her debut documentary at 2024’s screening. Rieger’s Nebenan centres on everyday people in Vienna who granted her film crew access to their private lives: it shows how protagonists Christine, Johanna, Nico, and Hans deal with loneliness and solitude. The original idea for this film arose in a chance meeting between the filmmaker and Christine in her stairwell as the latter was setting up a table for a neighbourly get-together in a corridor of the building. Johanna, on the other hand, is somebody whom Cordula had already gotten to know as part of an earlier project: Cordula had asked people living in a certain building in Vienna to each draw an object from their own dwelling that they thought best symbolised the word “home”. Their drawings were compiled and presented as a book. Nico is an old friend of the director’s, and the protagonist Hans in Nebenan is Cordula’s father. It was during the first COVID lockdown that Cordula initially asked herself just who the people were who lived next to her, whom she only heard: “Hearing them, I noticed how we all must have very different everyday lives. On the one side you heard children and then smelled food cooking, while on the other side you heard somebody having sex.” Cordula had already worked on several short films, but this was her first feature-length effort. She views time as the biggest challenge involved in making films of such length: “Everything takes way longer. I think the biggest challenge here was that we all had to work on the side, which meant that the focus necessary to concentrate solely on this one project was sometimes difficult to maintain; we repeatedly found ourselves having to get back into it.” Also interesting was how the dramaturgy here functioned compared with the way things are in a short film: the questions of how much complexity one can bring to bear in portraying a person and how much time can be devoted to doing so are just a couple of the ones she ended up dealing with, here. Nebenan is currently being screened at further festivals.
Pipi Fröstl and Felix Krisai were one of only a few directing duos at 2024’s screening. Pipi is working on her MA in Screenplay Writing and Dramaturgy, while Felix is an MA student in the Directing programme. Their Strangers Like Us shows how Laura and her partner host two friends—the couple Nina and Patrick—at their new house. As the evening progresses, the main character finds herself in an increasingly absurd situation and begins to wonder: “Is this really still my home, or is it Nina and Patrick’s?” The idea behind this film occurred to Felix as he arrived back at his own place one day and asked himself what it would be like if he could no longer unlock his own door and someone else opened it for him. In their joint works to date, Pipi and Felix have collaborated in consistently different ways—with their co-direction of Strangers Like Us being a première of sorts. Both found it enriching to have a second opinion on hand and be able to discuss anything at any time during the filmmaking process. Pipi has enjoyed sharing roles in projects for some time now: “I find it extremely fascinating to collaborate and divide artistic responsibility. It also automatically makes things easier, in a way, since you don’t have to do everything alone.” Pipi and Felix have already taken their short film to Vienna Shorts, the Shortynale in Klosterneuburg, and the Austrian film festival Diagonale in Graz, where they won the Thomas Pluch Award for the best screenplay for a short or medium-length feature film. While the two are happy about the attention they’ve received for this work, they generally aim to maintain some distance from the hugely competitive attitudes that characterise festivals. “Anticipating success just leads to disappointment and distracts you from actual narration and exploration,” says Felix.
Martin Weiss’s short film Stillstand einer Welle was shown as part of 2024’s opening night at the Gartenbaukino. This film is about Georg, recently separated from his wife Sieglinde. He now lives alone in their big house, whose garden had really always been taken care of by his wife. Georg mounts an attempt to win Sieglinde back with his own passion for this little plot of greenery. The films to be screened at the opening are chosen by the heads of Film Academy Vienna in a special selection process. Martin had authored the screenplay to Stillstand einer Welle for an assignment back in his first semester in the Editing degree programme. During his parents’ divorce, his father had moved an ironing board that got mistaken for a surfboard by a building custodian—and it was this episode that inspired Martin’s film project. In addition to his authorship of the screenplay to Stillstand einer Welle, Martin also assumed responsibility for directing and editing. He’d figured that taking on these multiple roles would be advantageous, enabling him to work on the film at any time and also try working in various areas. The big drawback, however, was a lack of exchange with colleagues plus lonely lunch breaks during his work. As for the Werkschau, Martin values this festival’s familial character and the safe feeling of being surrounded by fellow students: “At the Werkschau, we watch each other’s films and also get to know each other better.” And at 2024’s event, it was the Film Academy students themselves who moderated the Q&A sessions following each screening at the Stadtkino and Art House Cinema. “Having the filmmakers lead the interviews made it more about exchange between experts. It made a difference in how the Q&As ran, and I really liked that,” comments Martin—who doesn’t exclude the possibility that he’ll direct other productions or maybe even pursue formal studies in this area the future.
November 2025 will see the Werkschau celebrate ten years, with its audience thus able to look forward to special events in addition to the usual programme of film screenings. Further information will be released over the next few months at the web presence of Film Academy Vienna.
