Directing
SWEAT follows the last three days of a friendship between two girls. Marion and Elisa live in a quiet village in the countryside that offers them very little. They roam their rural surroundings, go to parties, watch videos, swim in the lake and fight. Angry about the accustomed, they develop new, unexpected power. And start to act it out.
The residents of a Viennese truck-stop and a nearby camping-ground share a common need: Resting and relaxing in between traveling. Be it vacation or because of work, the visitors take their private spaces with them. The everyday rituals performed at the rest stop, tell stories about the personalities and situations of those who make these small spaces their home for the night.
We are accumulating more and more data, images and sound snippets. But how can we remember when digital materials marked by decay fail? When formats, players and codecs have become unplayable? Filmmaker and author Iris Blauensteiner (SCHWITZEN) traces remaining data and memories from past projects and lends them a second, ghostly existence.
"What could I tell you about the world I live in?" Addressing her unborn child, the narrator tries to find answers partly through claustrophobic pictures interwoven with intimate notes on a pregnancy in times of a pandemic. Based on a childhood memory, the experimental short film spans from the Cold War Iron Curtain, to the so-called “refugee crisis” and the renewed closing of borders during COVID-19. Textures of walls closing in, blur with pixelated maps, creating a subjective portrait of a new reality and its digital image-world.
