All Films in Competition

Like You Do was completed during lock-down in 2021. It is intended to be a nice place to spend some time.

Between the peaks and valleys of daily life is the journey, the happening. There is rhythm in the drift. All of it is valuable, some of it is beautiful, none of it is wasted time.

It’s a new kind of self-portrait. Usually artists paint themselves, but I have let all the people that know me, draw and paint my face. I’m not only as I see me, but also like my environment views me. Therefore I am everyone in these pictures and the sum of it all shall be me.
It’s also interesting to see the differences regarding the same object (me), as every person has its own style even if they are not aware of it.
This will be an ongoing project, as I’m always meeting new people. So I will release annually an updated version.

“What would happen if at some point, natural and human-made sounds became indistinguishable from one another? Today, birds imitate telephones and people put little chirping boxes in their homes. Katharina Pichler soberly compiles such observations while nature and civilization come together audio-visually to ultimately merge in a portentous alliance.” (Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film 2022, catalog text, cw)

When I sleep im not longer conscious about myself, I become in any animal, in any plant, in any image. I speak in foreign languages that I don’t even know. And the only reason I woke up was to tell you about my dreams and what happened to me lately

Nexum questions how we as individuals are psychologically relying on our inhabit spaces and how we as society are influencing and being influenced by our surroundings. The plot follows the everyday displacements of the protagonist through different urban, public and private spaces, and her way of interaction and exchange with them. A second parallel layer shows in a fictional way the impact of the different realms in the protagonists affective sensation, reflecting on how the interaction within diverse environments generate different psychological behaviours.

Like a caged moth –
I move from light spot to light spot
from room to room.
to let the sun in – just a little
8:12 am
I stopped listening to the news everyday”

What use have the mechanisms of meritocracy in times of rapid change? What relevance has the constant look on the clock and how does it effect our psyche in times of a global pandemic? Where is the feeling of constantly having to be productive coming from? This work visualizes questions related to the passing of time and the pressure of performance – in a time that is so different than ever before.

In the field of tension between work and private retreat, the downfall of an administrative officer is sketched who is no longer up to his changing environment and who finally succumbs to it through his own disappearance. What remains is a society without a human face in a deserted architecture… a city minus people in its poetic and cruel beauty.

Alexander (65), an Uruguayan living in Vienna, is going through the quarantine of 2020, and has developed a particular relationship with his pillow. This ordinary object of everyday life, works as a “bridge” to Alexander’s dreams, being the pillow a vehicle to discover other dimensions of life. This docu-fictional film presents hints of comedy, fantasy and poetry. It shows the daily routine and thoughts of a human being that finds a new meaning to this historic lockdown.