Veronika Susanna Harb

Sometime, hopefully not too soon, in a place wherever but not here, all life will have moved underground after a failed uprising. Everybody wears a mask, more often than not of the variety seen only at Halloween these days. In this scary universe (that on closer inspection looks like a twisted, perverted version of our here and now...), a man with a gorilla mask is searching for a little boy with a hessian hood. His quest leads him into a maze of depravity, a pandemonium of all our nightmares and darkest desires – where something awaits that he had already given up on: love.

Sleepwalker tells three stories against the backdrop of a New Year's Eve: Lola and Paul, who drift aimlessly through the city and provoke complete strangers. Simon and Marie, who spend the evening with Simon's professor and his wife, gaining an ominous insight into their own possible future. And the teacher Karin, who spends the night with her student Fuad. A small panorama of a society on the brink of a turning point. A film about the fear of inner stagnation, while history has picked up full speed again after decades of order. The conflicts of 2020 loom on the horizon, but are still too abstract to be perceived as a serious threat. Somewhere, far away in downtown Vienna, thousands of people are celebrating a boisterous party, but our characters see no reason to join in.

Irina, a single-mother, must move in with her sugary sweet mother-in-law, Trudi. In spite of feeling suffocated by Trudi’s relentless generosity and greasy home-cooked meals, Irina always tries to maintain a grateful facade. Yet she’s plagued by a creeping sense of unease and is even terrorized by spine-chilling visions when she’s alone. How long can she grit her teeth and swallow everything while denying the rage that is growing in her gut?

A story about Hannah (Anna Åström), a young woman who is very shy on the outside, but whose inner world is deep, exciting and vibrant. One day, Hannah notices a house that looks as if it is cut out from a hip home decorating magazine. Intrigued, she decides to break in and try to find out who owns this emotionless beautiful home equipped with high-end technology. While at first Hannah enjoys the luxury, she starts to notice on each visit that Max (Stipe Erceg), the owner of the house, is excessively obsessed with his physical possessions. He has spent a lot of time to make sure that everything external meets the society’s standards that he has forgotten himself. The things that he himself likes, the activities that make him smile, and the people who make him happy. Having realised that, Hannah starts leaving hints for Max, so as to shake him out of the the everyday emptiness and make him focus on what is important.

On the 3rd of October a twenty-four-year-old student from Vienna kills his lover and chops up her corpse. Her torso is found in a dumpster, other body parts and the head are missing. There is no clue about the motive of the murder. A silent chronology of the events.

At a highway rest stop, a nameless and taciturn truck driver and her dog meet a colleague. In the middle of nowhere, a brief moment of encounter unfolds over the course of an evening. It’s about what was and what will be. The life down the road lies in leaving behind, in handing over, in the painful entrusting of a burden.