Relation/alities
Undercurrents
Mistrust and loneliness are not easily discarded. They slip into our unconscious, settling in our lives like swallows on a cold day. Yet within them lingers a quiet longing for connection and security, for the chance to care and be cared for. These films – encounters with ghosts and abysses, fading relationships, forbidden desires, nightmares and lingering daydreams – peer into what wants to be pushed aside, seeking to find closeness, touch, and understanding.
Systems of Control
The films in this program examine systems of power and institutional violence. Surveying different mechanisms of control, they take a look at how recurring patterns and cyclical movements within these systemic structures impact and constrain individual lives. In dealing with limits and impossibilities, these films choose artistic forms of storytelling that themselves transcend boundaries in order to make the incomprehensible tangible.
Unsteady Grounds
The familiar continuously changes its character – transforming, distorting and shapeshifting. These films guide us through worlds where the seemingly known is questioned, fractured, or already dismantled, taking us into futures that are approaching the end of the world or where the supposed end has already happened. An oscillation between wasteland and wonderland, possibility and impossibility, utopia and dystopia.
A summer of heat and heartache, Kafkaesque objects turning against their owner, magical fridges as symbols of overconsumption, and words dissolving into dreams. Graffiti walls become living archives, gender identities are questioned, and extinct plants are resurrected through AI in a digital garden. Complemented by stunning sound-poetry eruptions, these Austrian animations reflect a vibrant scene that blurs the boundaries between reality, dreams, and imagination.
This tumultuous program delves into both the absurdity and the graveness of waiting lines, reality TV, zoom calls, and face rollers. Glossy fragments reveal the raw realities of performance pressure, consumption, and self-improvement as lifestyles. Here, anything can be turned into entertainment. The humorous reflections create a wild swirl of repeating patterns, exposing different neoliberal phenomena and processes as results of complex, interwoven systems of exploitation.
The films in this program examine the social, economic and political realities that shape – and are shaped by – the spaces we inhabit. They critically analyze processes of exclusion and displacement by illustrating the repercussions of gentrification, hyper-capitalist urban development, immigration laws and overtourism on the environments we live in.Collectively they ask: who has the right to the city, to housing, to public space?
Visual storytelling is a language of seemingly endless possibilities: it gives voice to silence, brings the past into the present, reveals connections between virtual and physical spaces, and transforms the ordinary into vibrant, colorful worlds. In dialogue, nine films explore the agency of visual narration, examining the complex relationship between technology and our engagement with (hi)stories – all while thoughtfully navigating the boundaries and fringes of storytelling.
Confined by projections, shaped by expectations – these films capture bodies and selves resisting the frames imposed upon them. Whether through quiet defiance or deliberate acts of refusal, they break out, shed layers, and reject conformity. Sometimes it is only in these acts of transgression that boundaries become visible at all.By breaking the mold, resisting the gaze and challenging the norm, these characters follow their inner urges rather than external pressures to carve their own paths.
Exploring the tension between holding on and moving forward, these films navigate processes of letting go – of a loved one, a place, or a time. We encounter characters in moments of transition, between grief and acceptance, childhood and adolescence, heartbreak and moving on. On their journey, they are confronted with the stickiness of memory, pasts that cling, nostalgia that turns into obsession. Yet, a sudden realization, an unexpected encounter, or the mere passage of enough time make movement possible again, allowing for release and new stories to begin.
At the beginning of it all is an insatiable monster. As such creatures demand feeding, it relentlessly h(a)unts the human world. Yet, this story does not center on childish ideas of external monsters; rather it explores what lies within ourselves: the routines that shape our daily lives, our unspoken desires, our deepest fears. When unearthed, these inner monsters reveal themselves as enemies as well as allies – with whom to share a bathtub, a dance or even a kiss.
In steam baths and living rooms, on city streets, in hidden refuges and the glare of the spotlight, even among the ruins at the edge of the world, connections and relationships are formed that create opportunities to navigate the world, challenge hierarchies, and nurture a sense of security and collective joy. ALLIANCES explores these special bonds, transgenerational networks, chosen families, and feminist alliances that represent spaces and loopholes of resistance and care in a patriarchally structured world.
IN PERSON aims to showcase exceptional positions within the animation landscape and to provide insights into both the creative and technical explorations and the working methods of selected animation artists. With this program, Tricky Women Tricky Realities highlights artists whose bodies of work span a long period of time, exploring, shaping, and challenging the possibilities of animation. The 2025 IN PERSON program of Tricky Women Tricky Realities is dedicated to Gina Kamentsky.
This year, three interactive VR works invite you to enjoy immersive experiences: KABARET explores coral spawning and a lonely shrimp’s worries about the future. CATHEX takes viewers on a cyberfeminist journey of catharsis, inspired by the philosophy of Mary Whiton Calkins. WHERE DOES THE REST OF THE WORLD BEGIN? poetically interweaves consciousness, nature, and technology. Presented in cooperation with XR Vienna, Immerea, and VRisch at the METRO Kino mezzanine. Free admission!