Ulrich Seidl

Directing

Ulrich Seidl

Born

1952-11-24 (73)

Place of birth

Vienna, Austria

Known for

Directing

Credits

45 titles

Ulrich Maria Seidl is a director, screenwriter and producer. He does not consider himself a documentary filmmaker, but several of his films often blend fiction and nonfiction. He started his career with award-winning documentaries such as "Good News" (1990), "Animal Love (1995), and "Models" (1998). Seidl's first feature film "Dog Days" won the Special Jury Price at Venice Film Festival in 2001. "Import Export" (2007), the first film produce by his own company, was invited to the Cannes competition. So far Seidl has directed some 20 feature films, fictive or non fictive.

Known for

Film credits

Series credits

Behind the camera

Goodnight Mommy poster
6.7

In the heat of the summer lays a lonesome house in the countryside where nine year old twin brothers await their mother’s return. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, nothing is like before and the children start to doubt whether this woman is actually who she says she is.

Goodnight Mommy

2015

Paradise: Love poster
6.6

On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.

Paradise: Love

2012

Paradise: Love poster
6.6

On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.

Paradise: Love

2012

Paradise: Love poster
6.6

On the beaches of Kenya they’re known as "Sugar Mamas" —European women who seek out African boys selling love to earn a living. Teresa, a 50-year-old Austrian and mother of a daughter entering puberty, travels to this vacation paradise, moving from beach to beach.

Paradise: Love

2012

Paradise: Faith poster
6.5

For Anna Maria, paradise lies with Jesus, and she devotes her time to door-to-door missionary work. One day after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim confined to a wheelchair, comes home—and soon prayers are replaced by fighting.

Paradise: Faith

2013

Paradise: Faith poster
6.5

For Anna Maria, paradise lies with Jesus, and she devotes her time to door-to-door missionary work. One day after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim confined to a wheelchair, comes home—and soon prayers are replaced by fighting.

Paradise: Faith

2013

Paradise: Faith poster
6.5

For Anna Maria, paradise lies with Jesus, and she devotes her time to door-to-door missionary work. One day after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim confined to a wheelchair, comes home—and soon prayers are replaced by fighting.

Paradise: Faith

2013

Venice 70: Future Reloaded poster
5.0

Made for the Venice Film Festival's 70th anniversary, seventy filmmakers made a short film between 60 and 90 seconds long on their interpretation of the future of cinema.

Venice 70: Future Reloaded

2013

Dog Days poster
6.6

Vignettes of the lives of several residents of a Vienna suburb during a heat wave.

Dog Days

2001

Dog Days poster
6.6

Vignettes of the lives of several residents of a Vienna suburb during a heat wave.

Dog Days

2001

Import/Export poster
6.8

A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life...

Import/Export

2007

Import/Export poster
6.8

A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life...

Import/Export

2007

Import/Export poster
6.8

A nurse from Ukraine searches for a better life in the West, while an unemployed security guard from Austria heads East for the same reason. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life...

Import/Export

2007

Luzifer poster
5.8

Johannes, an innocent, Kaspar Hauser-like man with the heart of a child, lives secluded in an alpine hut together with his eagle and his devout mother. Daily life in this isolated world is governed by prayer and ritual. But suddenly, modern objects and disruptive noises intrude between nature and worship. A tourist development threatens to poison their paradise and awaken the devil.

Luzifer

2021

No artwork available
NR

Journalist Carl Schwert (55) has always been interested in disaster. He has travelled to dark tourism destinations, meeting people who spend their spare time visiting prisons where captives were tortured, disaster zones, genocide memorial sites and slums. In between research trips he lives with his wife Sabine (38) in Vienna. She no longer leaves the house for fear of infection. Gradually, Schwert loses touch with reality and his life becomes increasingly unhinged.

Distances

—

No artwork available
NR

Journalist Carl Schwert (55) has always been interested in disaster. He has travelled to dark tourism destinations, meeting people who spend their spare time visiting prisons where captives were tortured, disaster zones, genocide memorial sites and slums. In between research trips he lives with his wife Sabine (38) in Vienna. She no longer leaves the house for fear of infection. Gradually, Schwert loses touch with reality and his life becomes increasingly unhinged.

Distances

—

No artwork available
NR

Journalist Carl Schwert (55) has always been interested in disaster. He has travelled to dark tourism destinations, meeting people who spend their spare time visiting prisons where captives were tortured, disaster zones, genocide memorial sites and slums. In between research trips he lives with his wife Sabine (38) in Vienna. She no longer leaves the house for fear of infection. Gradually, Schwert loses touch with reality and his life becomes increasingly unhinged.

Distances

—

Sun poster
5.5

Young women, Austrian style. Yesmin is Kurdish and wears a headscarf. She shoots a cheeky burqa video with Bella and Nati which makes the trio famous in the Muslim community. Controversy and alienation ensue. Immediate, exuberantly introverted cinema.

Sun

2022

Paradise: Hope poster
6.2

Her mother in Kenya, 13-year-old Melanie spends her summer vacation at a strict diet camp set in the Austrian countryside. Between workouts and nutrition classes, pillow fights and first cigarettes, she falls in love with a doctor 40 years her senior.

Paradise: Hope

2013

Paradise: Hope poster
6.2

Her mother in Kenya, 13-year-old Melanie spends her summer vacation at a strict diet camp set in the Austrian countryside. Between workouts and nutrition classes, pillow fights and first cigarettes, she falls in love with a doctor 40 years her senior.

Paradise: Hope

2013

Sparta poster
6.6

Ewald moved to Romania years ago. Now in his 40s, he seeks a fresh start. Leaving his girlfriend, he moves to the hinterland. With young boys from the area, he transforms a decaying school into a fortress. The children enjoy a new, carefree existence. But the distrust of the villagers is soon awoken. And Ewald is forced to confront a truth he has long suppressed.

Sparta

2022

Sparta poster
6.6

Ewald moved to Romania years ago. Now in his 40s, he seeks a fresh start. Leaving his girlfriend, he moves to the hinterland. With young boys from the area, he transforms a decaying school into a fortress. The children enjoy a new, carefree existence. But the distrust of the villagers is soon awoken. And Ewald is forced to confront a truth he has long suppressed.

Sparta

2022

Sparta poster
6.6

Ewald moved to Romania years ago. Now in his 40s, he seeks a fresh start. Leaving his girlfriend, he moves to the hinterland. With young boys from the area, he transforms a decaying school into a fortress. The children enjoy a new, carefree existence. But the distrust of the villagers is soon awoken. And Ewald is forced to confront a truth he has long suppressed.

Sparta

2022

Safari poster
6.5

Africa. In the wild expanses, where bush-bucks, impalas, zebras, gnus and other creatures graze by the thousands, they are on holiday. German and Austrian hunting tourists drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. They shoot, sob with excitement and pose before the animals they have bagged. A vacation movie about killing, a movie about human nature.

Safari

2016

Safari poster
6.5

Africa. In the wild expanses, where bush-bucks, impalas, zebras, gnus and other creatures graze by the thousands, they are on holiday. German and Austrian hunting tourists drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. They shoot, sob with excitement and pose before the animals they have bagged. A vacation movie about killing, a movie about human nature.

Safari

2016

Safari poster
6.5

Africa. In the wild expanses, where bush-bucks, impalas, zebras, gnus and other creatures graze by the thousands, they are on holiday. German and Austrian hunting tourists drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. They shoot, sob with excitement and pose before the animals they have bagged. A vacation movie about killing, a movie about human nature.

Safari

2016

Beware Haderer poster
NR

A staged TV portrait of the Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer; and first collaboration with Maria Hofstätter.

Beware Haderer

1992

Beware Haderer poster
NR

A staged TV portrait of the Austrian cartoonist Gerhard Haderer; and first collaboration with Maria Hofstätter.

Beware Haderer

1992

Rimini poster
6.3

Richie Bravo, once upon a time a successful pop star, chases after his faded fame in wintry Rimini. Trapped between permanent intoxication and concerts for busloads of tourists, his world starts to collapse when his adult daughter breaks into his life.

Rimini

2022

Rimini poster
6.3

Richie Bravo, once upon a time a successful pop star, chases after his faded fame in wintry Rimini. Trapped between permanent intoxication and concerts for busloads of tourists, his world starts to collapse when his adult daughter breaks into his life.

Rimini

2022

Rimini poster
6.3

Richie Bravo, once upon a time a successful pop star, chases after his faded fame in wintry Rimini. Trapped between permanent intoxication and concerts for busloads of tourists, his world starts to collapse when his adult daughter breaks into his life.

Rimini

2022

The Bosom Friend poster
6.8

Main character of this movie is Rene Rupnik, a former math teacher. He is forty years old and lives together with his mother in a desolate block of flats. Ever since his early youth women with big breasts have fascinated him, because they symbolise a kind of earth mother to him. He has never had an especially close relationship with his own mother; she was too 'bony' for him. Object of Rene's fantasy is the actress Senta Berger, to him everything a woman should be. Standing by the blackboard and explaining the mathematical laws of sine and cosine ('sinus' is bosom in Latin), Rene sings the praises of the female curves and those of Santa Berger in particular. Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl let the former teacher speak freely about his obsessions and desires, intercutting his monologues with scenes from the protagonist's day-to-day life.

The Bosom Friend

1997

The Bosom Friend poster
6.8

Main character of this movie is Rene Rupnik, a former math teacher. He is forty years old and lives together with his mother in a desolate block of flats. Ever since his early youth women with big breasts have fascinated him, because they symbolise a kind of earth mother to him. He has never had an especially close relationship with his own mother; she was too 'bony' for him. Object of Rene's fantasy is the actress Senta Berger, to him everything a woman should be. Standing by the blackboard and explaining the mathematical laws of sine and cosine ('sinus' is bosom in Latin), Rene sings the praises of the female curves and those of Santa Berger in particular. Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl let the former teacher speak freely about his obsessions and desires, intercutting his monologues with scenes from the protagonist's day-to-day life.

The Bosom Friend

1997

Animal Love poster
6.6

In conurbations where hundreds of thousands live alongside one another, in the era of a highly technological society, in which communication has never played such a significant role, man has become lonely. Disappointed by his fellow human beings, he turns to animals. Dogs and other domestic animals serve him as companions, life partners, cuddly objects and bedfellows.

Animal Love

1996

Animal Love poster
6.6

In conurbations where hundreds of thousands live alongside one another, in the era of a highly technological society, in which communication has never played such a significant role, man has become lonely. Disappointed by his fellow human beings, he turns to animals. Dogs and other domestic animals serve him as companions, life partners, cuddly objects and bedfellows.

Animal Love

1996

In the Basement poster
6.1

Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl explores of the dark underside of the human psyche by entering Austrian basements fitted out as private domains for secrets and fetishes.

In the Basement

2014

In the Basement poster
6.1

Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl explores of the dark underside of the human psyche by entering Austrian basements fitted out as private domains for secrets and fetishes.

In the Basement

2014

In the Basement poster
6.1

Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl explores of the dark underside of the human psyche by entering Austrian basements fitted out as private domains for secrets and fetishes.

In the Basement

2014

Moon poster
6.9

Sarah, a former professional kickboxer from Vienna, accepts an offer to work as a personal trainer for a rich family in the Middle East. She finds herself in a foreign world, in a palace behind walls and cut off from the internet, where the sisters are under surveillance around the clock. They have no interest in learning to box. So why has Sarah been brought here?

Moon

2024

No artwork available
NR

Laleh, a journalist from Paris, finds herself caught in the crossfire in Iraq when ISIS suddenly invades the country. As she flees, she encounters other refugees, Iraqi families and children, as well as former U.S. soldiers and Kurdish freedom fighters.

Sterne

—