web - (HERO) The White Ribbon 1
"Continental Divide": The Unflinching Vision of Michael Haneke - Wed 16 Apr - Wed 30 Apr 2025

The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present

Continental Divide: The Unflinching Vision of Michael Haneke

Film program

When

Wed 16 Apr – Wed 30 Apr 2025

See below for additional related events

Michael Haneke (1942–) is Austria’s most celebrated contemporary filmmaker and one of the most uncompromising, innovative directors working in cinema today. His often austere and formally rigorous work is concerned with some of the key issues facing modern humanity including the breakdown of communication, the alienation and estrangement wrought by contemporary society, the impact of media technologies and the devastating legacy of the historical calamities of the 20th century.

Confrontational, disturbing and endlessly thought provoking, Haneke’s cinema seeks to contemplate the alienating effects of our technological civilisation.

The Melbourne Cinémathèque presents its second retrospective – following its first 20 years ago – of one of modern cinema’s great moralists, featuring work from his early career in television alongside four of his greatest films of the 21st century. This more recent body of work has cemented his reputation as a key filmmaker for our times and has also seen his scalpel-like vision tackle increasingly complex and nuanced issues and histories.

This season includes two of Haneke’s rarely screened TV movies, both of which explore the cataclysmic legacy of war. The Rebellion (1993) is based on Joseph Roth’s novel and follows the downward spiral of a disabled ex-World War I soldier, while Lemmings Tale I: Arcadia (1979) explores the legacy inherited by Haneke’s generation after the devastation of Nazism and World War II. It places these earlier works alongside a selection of Haneke’s most celebrated films, including both of his extraordinary Cannes Palme d’Or winners, The White Ribbon (2009) and Amour (2012), and his bold adaptation of Nobel Prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek’s 1983 novel, The Piano Teacher (2001).

Where

Cinema 1, Level 2
ACMI, Fed Square

Plan your visit

Membership options

Mini membership
(3 consecutive weeks)
$30.5–36

Annual memberships
$174–325

SEE FULL OPTIONS

Films in this program (Wed 16 Apr – Wed 30 Apr 2025)

There are no upcoming related events at this time.

About Melbourne Cinémathèque

Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.

Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven. 

Learn more | View the 2024 program | See membership options

Melbourne Cinémathèque - Dirk Bogarde in a still from Victim

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