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ACTOR
Ekateryna RakLidiya Oleksandrivna SavkaOksana Ivanivna SklyarenkoDmytro Andriyovich Gachkov
DIRECTOR
Ulrich Seidl
SYNOPSICS
Import Export (2007) is a German,Russian,Slovak,Czech,English movie. Ulrich Seidl has directed this movie. Ekateryna Rak,Lidiya Oleksandrivna Savka,Oksana Ivanivna Sklyarenko,Dmytro Andriyovich Gachkov are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2007. Import Export (2007) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
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.
Import Export (2007) Reviews
Death and Money
I saw this movie in London on a Friday night in October at a point when the world's finances were in meltdown and the FTSE had lost 9% of its value in one day. So what? So everything... This film couldn't have been more apposite; Import Export is all about capitalism - and cash. Having it. Not having it. And the humiliations most people must undergo just to stay afloat. And, as it turns out in this movie, the real heroes of the piece are the 'losers' West and East, but particularly the latter; losers who may have few chips to bet in capitalism's little crap game, but ones who haven't yet forgotten their humanity. In particular Olga, the Ukrainian nurse who travels to the West only to absorb one humiliation after another. In a series of beautiful scenes in the Geriatric hospital in Vienna where she now works as a cleaner - we see her variously comb the hair of a demented inmate before a nurse tell her it's against the rules, plug in a phone and sing a lullaby to her baby a thousand miles to the East, dance tenderly with a dying patient in a basement storeroom and later go to the 'Exitus' to make a last vigil over his body, a moment of almost religious intensity... Interwoven with her story, is that of Pauli who makes the journey in the opposite direction, ending up in the Ukraine with his debased and alcoholic step-father, a pathetic and impotent racist whose behaviour reminded me strongly of the SS invaders in the climactic scene of Elim Klimov's Come and See. A man whose debasement is a cypher for the moral emptiness of the West. For money, he gets a prostitute, naked from the waist down, to crawl round on her hands and knees while telling her to repeat, in German, a language she doesn't understand, that she's a 'stupid f**king c**t'. The power of money. The only thing he understands... Pauli finally tries to 'defect' to the East. But even there the system is now dog eat dog so he leaves his step-father and begins to hitch-hike back. Meanwhile, at the hospital, the cleaners, ladies from the East all, sit in their overalls around a dinner table and share a joke. And laugh and laugh and laugh. Their spirit is not dead. It's the real power of the downtrodden. Everywhere.
A cold,bleak and pitiless film!
Whereas Ulrich Seidl in "Hundstage", his first non-documentary film took the hottest days of the year for the description of apathy, brutality and humiliation in society, his new film takes place in a cold scenery. And that in a double sense: While in the East (mostly in the Ukraine) there is a deep winterly climate, in the West (Vienna) the relations and the social environment are characterized by coldness.Seidl's films have always been controversial because of the docu-like unrelenting gaze of their pictures,which abstain from any commentary and because of their description of social milieus and phenomenons one usually does not perceive or doesn't want to.All that applies also to "Import Export".Here we find scenes of grotesque disgust, in which the spectator is ashamed of watching and blaming the camera for its rigidity.On the other hand these films create some kind of maelstrom,which is difficult to escape from.There always is the question:Does he exploits his protagonists or not.Well, everyone has to find his own answer: I don't think so because showing the situation does not mean its denunciation.The story depicts in two unrelated strands two diametrical movements: From East to West and vice versa.The title already refers to the films main subject:The goods-like character,which the globalized capitalistic world imposes on the people.The society is in a desperate state ; nevertheless it is Seidl's most human film.He seems to show empathy for his two protagonists and even if there is no sort of Happy-End - the film has no real end at all,but just leaves its figures alone- the hope remains,that they have got a little bit of strength and decisiveness,which could make a more self-defined life in the future possible.Or maybe not.Every Film of Seidl makes you leave the cinema thinking,that the whole world and the people are in a desperate and hopeless state,but here we have at least little moments of tenderness,in which we see people fighting for their dignity.A rigorous film for the lovers of contemporary austrian film(Albert, Glawogger,Haneke) and definitely no "entertainement".
Life without home
Many film's about sad, boring lives are themselves boring (and not truly sad). Not so Ulrich Siedl's remarkable 'Import/Export', which tells a simple, and fundamentally depressing, story at great length, but with compelling naturalism. Not only that, but Siedl shows an uncanny ability to find interesting shots: the film has a haunting quality, and in every scene there's something that draws the viewer's attention and makes one think. The plot, such as it is, tells the story of two people, a Ukranian woman to emigrates to Austria in search of a better life, and an Austrian man who ends up in Ukraine; in Hollywood, their stories would inevitably be drawn together, but Siedl keeps them in parallel throughout. One link is that both are involved (at different ends) in the Ukranian sex industry, and Siedl's uncompromising depiction of this attracted some notoriety for this movie; but it's a long way from a titillating film. The acting is excellent, and the way the characters evolve is fascinating. Ekatarina Rak's Olga is allowed to inch slowly towards a better life in Austria, albeit at a high price. Paul Hofmann's Pauli is even more interesting, a loner and misfit denied the chance by his environment to become a good person; disaffected from his present life, he can find no route map to another one. Not only do the two stories not converge, but one ends with a lengthy series of hospital scenes in which the origin of the central character is of decreasing importance; this could be a film about lonely people anywhere. Indeed, for all the film's "naturalism", it's depiction of social reality might perhaps be questioned, I would have guessed this movie was set in 1997 rather than 10 years later (although my own estimate of reality is based on the newspapers, so it may well be this that is wrong). Certainly the film is not an explicit political indictment. But it is a sympathetic and original insight into existential loneliness and the harshness of life in the modern world.
A great, disturbing film!
Import/Export is not a film one recommends easily. It is a great film but it is not one to look at casually. The director Ulrich Seidl already has a reputation for drastic dialog and acting in his films. He started with documentaries and this is always apparent in his consequent films. The atmosphere is often unbearably realistic, many of his actors deliver so convincing performances that one thinks they must have been brought in from the street. They are not though. This, combined with simple framing leads to the strong documentary impression. In this film the focus is on two story lines which move in opposite directions. On starts in the Ukrainia and moves to Vienna, Austria and the other starts in Vienna and ends in Ukrainia. Both show a harsh life with violence and humiliation and sexual exploitation. While viewing this film I often wanted to look away or close my eyes as to protect my soul from the terrible experiences, the two protagonists are facing in very different ways. The moments of violence, humiliation and sexuality, although shorter then in his earlier films, are shown in a very graphic way, and stay in your mind long after the picture is over. Maybe you will never forget them. In this, the film has some parallels to Lukas Moodysons "Lilja 4-ever" which also makes you forget that it is a work of fiction you are watching. Moodyson concentrates himself completely on the tragic story of the main character's exploitation through the economic system and the resulting criminality in eastern Europe, plus the demand for sex without love in the western world and it"s tragic consequences for your unprotected girls. Seidl, on the other hand, chooses a young but grown up woman and mother in Ukrainia, a trained nurse, who can't make a living by working in a hospital and is forced to work as a porn model in from of an internet camera. Then she leaves for Vienna to work there in various unpleasant jobs. In the second storyline Seidl shows a young man from Vienna, trying unsuccessful to hold a job and always on the run from people he borrowed money from. He joins his stepfather on his trip through eastern Europe, delivering game automates and the like. They are both frustrated by their poor outlook of their future, and although they don't like each other, they both concur in spending their money easily on booze and women which they like to intimidate and humiliate. The film has some rare comic moments, but often scenes open on a funny note but then change fast into something that makes you choke on your own laughter. All in all a great, disturbing film!
A Film That Should Elicit A Response From The Viewer
No matter what you think about a film like Import/Export, you have to have some kind of reaction to it. It is an unsettling, bleak look at a couple of lives that the viewer will rarely think about unless confronted with in a film like this. The story takes place in both Ukraine and in Austria and focuses on 2 lives of very different people who share a similar circumstance of being at the end of the line in the place that they live in. Both seek change and their circumstances take very different shapes and fates but share a similar intention, to find a better life. The director and writer give us little hope in their depiction of these 2 lives and how their environments constantly conspire to either keep them down or challenge their will to survive and change. It is a story at once about Eastern Europe and a story about the world's 'lower classes' and their monumental struggle against inertia and their past. It is a movie filled with images, humor, highs and lows, and, graphic scenes of sexual play that all add to the base quality of the human experience that exists not only in Eastern Europe, but, many place in the world today. Human beings have created incredible technology and yet there is still so much ignorance, cruelty, and, general meanness in the world. A rough film told with a keen eye toward a subtle message.