The Seventh Continent

Feeling suffocated by modern life in Europe, a family make a plan to relocate to Australia in Michael Haneke’s anarchistic debut feature.

Over three days, each one a full year apart, a family living in Austria go about their daily routine.

They go to work, they go shopping and they have the occasional dinner party. For the Schober family, it’s all rather mundane.

Acting out on her boredom, daughter Eva one day feigns blindness at school. Their parents take matters into their own hands, planning to leave everything behind and make a fresh start in Australia.

Curator’s Note

It takes creative guts to make a film like The Seventh Continent. It takes even more to make it as a debut feature.

Michael Haneke had spent a decade working in television before crossing over to cinema. And it was perhaps that experience which emboldened him to begin a film about a family without letting the audience see them – Haneke distances us from them and makes us want to draw in closer.

It’s a bold choice in a film of bold maneuvres. We’re played with, we’re manipulated and we’re left to pick up the pieces at the end – and there are a lot.

The Seventh Continent screened as part of the Director’s Fortnight at the 42nd Cannes Film Festival.

– Reece Goodwin, Curator (Film & TV)