Fritz Aigner

“The Meadow”, a film by so far unsuccessful director Fritz Aigner, causes a surprising stir at the Venice film festival. As a result, a notable producer tasks Aigner to shoot a sequel. The making of the film turns out to be a disaster. As the entire film crew rebels against the director’s growing delusions of grandeur, he finds himself confronted with the antagonists of his own fiction: Morgenstern and Boyd. They suck him into a spiral of sexual obsessions and omnipotent fantasies, at the end of which there can only be the failure of the film or death itself.

An ORF III production about resistance in Upper Styria. The Styrian Iron Road region around Leoben and the Erzberg was a key center of resistance against National Socialism, rooted in a long tradition of workers’ rights struggles. Courageous freedom fighters, including figures from the workers’ movement such as Sepp Filz and Max Muchitsch, formed the Austrian Freedom Front Leoben-Donawitz and risked their lives opposing the Nazi dictatorship. They fought for a free, democratic Austria as the regime led the country toward destruction. The film recounts daring acts of sabotage against the wartime economy, deadly clashes with Nazi troops in the Eisenerz mountains, and brave women such as Mathilde Auferbauer and Christine Berger, who were deported to Ravensbrück for supporting the partisans. After the war, Filz and his comrades saved the Donawitz steelworks from Nazi destruction and helped rebuild democracy in Upper Styria.

“The Meadow”, a film by so far unsuccessful director Fritz Aigner, causes a surprising stir at the Venice film festival. As a result, a notable producer tasks Aigner to shoot a sequel. The making of the film turns out to be a disaster. As the entire film crew rebels against the director’s growing delusions of grandeur, he finds himself confronted with the antagonists of his own fiction: Morgenstern and Boyd. They suck him into a spiral of sexual obsessions and omnipotent fantasies, at the end of which there can only be the failure of the film or death itself.

“The Meadow”, a film by so far unsuccessful director Fritz Aigner, causes a surprising stir at the Venice film festival. As a result, a notable producer tasks Aigner to shoot a sequel. The making of the film turns out to be a disaster. As the entire film crew rebels against the director’s growing delusions of grandeur, he finds himself confronted with the antagonists of his own fiction: Morgenstern and Boyd. They suck him into a spiral of sexual obsessions and omnipotent fantasies, at the end of which there can only be the failure of the film or death itself.