Biography
Ulrich Seidl grew up in Horn, Austria, in a strictly religious Catholic family of doctors. [7] His first feature film was the documentary Good News , which he produced seven years after leaving the Vienna Film Academy . It contrasts the lives of the people who sell newspapers with those who read them.
Models depicts the everyday lives of second-rate Austrian models who, juggling clubbing, apartment work, and catalog shoots, try to lead a glamorous life, reacting to sexist photographers and disappointing relationships with exaggerated superficiality and cocaine use. The graphic film was confiscated in Slovenia. Animal Love portrays animal lovers who have strangely intimate emotional relationships with their pets. In 2001, he released Dog Days, his first feature film, which also includes professional actors. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and achieved approximately 250,000 cinema admissions internationally. [8] [9]
Ulrich Seidl has had a close relationship with the Drosendorf Film Club for many years and maintains a second home in Drosendorf. The premiere of Dog Days took place at the film club. [10]
In 2003, he co-founded Ulrich Seidl Film Produktion with Veronika Franz . Director and screenwriter Veronika Franz has been a long-time artistic collaborator on all of Ulrich Seidl's films since 1997. She co-wrote the screenplays with him for films such as Dog Days(2001), Import Export (2007), and the Paradise Trilogy (2012/13). Following Import Export (2007), the first film Seidl produced with his own production company, came his successful and award-winning Paradise Trilogy (2012/2013), whose films premiered in competition at Cannes, Venice, and Berlin. The first installment, Paradise: Love, tells the story of three women from the same family who spend their holidays separately. The other two parts focus on a Catholic missionary (Paradise: Faith) and a teenager at a diet camp (Paradise: Hope). In Paradise: Love, Margarethe Tiesel plays a sex tourist who travels from Austria to Kenya to experience love with young Black men. For this film, Seidl received his second invitation to the competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012. [11] At the Austrian Film Awards , it won Best Film Production as well as Best Director and Best Actress (Margarethe Tiesel). In the same year, Seidl was invited to the competition at the Venice Film Festival for the second part of his trilogy, Paradise: Faith. The film tells the story of Maria Hofstätter , a single woman who, during her vacation, goes from house to house with a "wandering statue of the Virgin Mary" to make Austria more Catholic. At home, a conflict erupts over marriage and religion when her wheelchair-using husband, an Egyptian Muslim, returns to her after years of absence. [12] The final part of the trilogy, Paradise: Hope , was invited to the competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival .
The film In the Basement shows, among other scenes, men meeting in a cellar in Marz filled with Nazi memorabilia, and triggered the resignation of two of the filmed men as ÖVP (Austrian People's Party) municipal councilors. [13]
In 2014, Seidl produced the horror film Goodnight Mommy (Ich seh Ich seh) with Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion, [14] starring twins Elias Schwarz and Lukas Schwarz. [15] It was directed by the Austrian directing duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala . Goodnight Mommy (2014), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, was Austria's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. A US remake of the film is in development, produced by the production company Animal Kingdom (“It Follows”, “It Comes at Night”).
In 2022, Seidl received an invitation to the competition at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival for his feature film Rimini. [16] In 2024, he was appointed to the jury of the 72nd San Sebastian International Film Festival. [17]
Controversy
In early September 2022, Der Spiegel published a report alleging that some underage amateur actors had been "apparently exploited" during the filming of Seidl's film Sparta in Romania. [19] The children's parents were not informed that the film dealt with, among other things, pedophilia, according to the allegations. Further accusations included nudity, violence, and excessively long working hours. [20] Seidl refuted the article that same day, stating that it "assembled inaccurate portrayals, rumors, or incidents taken out of context... into a distorted picture that in no way corresponds to the facts"; he could not let this go unchallenged. [21] The premiere of Sparta at the Toronto International Film Festival was canceled after the allegations became public. [22] In mid-September 2022, members of the film crew raised further allegations in the Viennese newspaper Falter. The film was to be shown in Austria for the first time at the 60th Viennale at the end of October. In a statement in early October 2022, the Austrian Association of Film Directors criticized the media coverage, saying it had contributed to a prejudgment of Seidl. [23]
