Hanno Pöschl Movies

A happily married couple becomes unlikely friends with a man whose life has been marked by chaos and violence in this drama from Austria. Alex (Johannes Krisch) is a small-time criminal who, after a stretch in prison, finds himself working for Konecny (Hanno Pöschl), who runs a grimy house of prostitution; unknown to Konecny, Alex is also involved with Tamara (Irina Potapenko), one of his whores. Wanting to raise some quick cash, Alex robs a bank in a nearby small town and hides out on a farm owned by his grandfather (Hannes Thanheiser) while he waits for the heat to cool down. Alex tries to keep a low profile in the country, and he's troubled by boredom and despair, but his mood brightens when he strikes up a friendship with Susanne (Ursula Strauss), a cheerful and generous woman who lives nearby. But Alex's new friend happens to be married to Robert (Andreas Lust), a member of the local police force. Revanche was screened as an official entry at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This Austrian comedy is laced with a touch of black humor as it follows the exploits of a young man runs away to the country to get away from his family and life in the city. Mario had a tough life. He was abused by his father, gang raped in prison, and then after he becomes friends with a transvestite is booted out by his dad. He goes to the country and meets an old farmer who invites him to stay. There he meets the farmer's never-wed middle aged daughter. Mario and she gradually fall in love. She helps him after his father shows up and tries to blackmail him. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Ali Mohammed teaches German in Iran, his native country, and he tries to be a faithful Muslim: he is certainly devout. He has flown to Vienna from Iran with his sister and his son and must wait there until he gets a visa to visit the U.S., which was his planned destination. He has put the family up at a hotel for immigrants and is horrified to see the immoral influence this setting has on his son and sister. In the first place, the hotel is directly across from a brothel, and his son begins to hang out with the establishment's women. Their influence leads him to get involved with some local cut-ups; joining them in a prank, he is arrested. Meanwhile, the teacher's hitherto modest sister is happily being wooed by a Polish man and is behaving more like a Western woman every day. On top of that, his landlady is trying to put the make on him. By the time he has adapted to all these situations, the idea of relocating to the U.S. has become much less appealing to him. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Danny (Huub Stapel) is an enterprising German who runs a disco that caters to American servicemen. In spite of his business (and the lucrative prostitution ring), Danny owes the bank and the mob tons of money from his addiction to gambling. He temporarily outwits the mob, but his disco is torched in retaliation, and two of his three hookers are taken for partial payment on his debts. Danny then turns a mobile library into a gambling operation in this tragic moral drama. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

First-time director Paulus Manker builds the tension in this dramatic and symbolic thriller to a shocking climax. Joseph Schmutz (Fritz Schediwy) is a self-effacing man who gets a job as a security guard at an abandoned paper mill. He shares his duties with another guard who is something of a goof-off. Eventually, the joker gets sacked for his behavior and Schmutz is left alone to guard the buildings. As time progresses, he becomes increasingly obsessed with his responsibilities to the property until his job as a guard begins to take over his life. He will guard the buildings against anyone and everyone -- even his boss, even a child he finds breaking windows, even the men who come to raze the buildings as ordered. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Werner (Hanno Pöschl) is a swift and canny cardsharp about to face a surprise showdown with his retired father in this wry story about outfoxing the foxes. Werner plays poker with all sorts of devious tricks to ensure that he will come out ahead -- otherwise, why play? Each year, Werner goes to visit his father -- a former actor -- on his birthday, and the two celebrate the occasion. This year, his father has set up a friendly poker game to welcome his son, just a few companions out for a pleasant time. Werner joins the group, and, much to his astonishment, his father and the two buddies start winning every hand. Rattled and confused, Werner is about to lose more than his shirt -- though there is some hope that his aging father will, in the end, have pity on his son and give him back his Porsche -- and maybe an explanation. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A sailor learns to take, and give, it like a man in this surrealistic adaptation of writer and thief Jean Genet's novel Querelle de Brest by avant-garde German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In a colorful brothel in the port of Brest, proprietor Nono (Gunther Kaufmann) is known for wagering with his customers. Win a throw of the dice, and they get to make love with his wife, Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau); lose, and they must take it from behind by Nono himself. One day, Lysiane reads the tarot for her lover, Robert (Hanno Poschl), and learns in the cards of his intense passion for his brother, Querelle (Brad Davis). Querelle himself soon arrives, and the brothers enact a bizarre greeting halfway between a hug and a wrestling match. Querelle, it seems, is looking for partners in a drug deal; Robert points him in the right direction. An argument about the merits of sex between men soon leads Querelle to murder his fellow smuggler, Vic (Dieter Schidor). Back at the whorehouse, Querelle loses on purpose to Nono and finds he has a taste for passive gay sex. Meanwhile, fellow sailor Gil, who looks exactly like Querelle's brother (and is played by the same actor), murders one of his compatriots after the brute publicly impugns his manhood. Wanted by the police for both his own crime and Querelle's, Gil goes on the lam. Querelle soon crashes his hideout, and an intense bond develops between the two murderers -- a friendship that will lead Querelle to the greatest love, and the greatest treachery, of his life. Director Fassbinder was in the process of editing Querelle when he died of a drug overdose in June 1982. Gunther Kaufmann, who plays Nono, was Fassbinder's ex-lover; the film is dedicated to another former lover, El Hedi Ben Salem, the news of whose suicide had just reached the director. Critically derided even by many of Fassbinder's admirers, Querelle earned a Golden Raspberry award for Worst "Original" Song for "Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves," an Oscar Wilde poem set to music by Peer Raben and sung repeatedly by Jeanne Moreau. Moreau had previously starred in Mademoiselle, a Tony Richardson effort co-scripted by Genet. Look for Frank Ripploh, another pioneering German director, in a cameo. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

In this send-up of politics and sex, and what is or is not obscene, director Hans -Christof Stenzel has hero Peter Herzl (Volker Spengler) is forced by circumstances into temporary shelter with Kathi Zokan (Lydia Kreibohm), a prostitute who keeps Peter's presence a secret from her pimp, Joe Neuffer (Hanno Poeschi). While Joe is busy with his especially depraved sex parlors, complete with balconies for viewing in one case, Peter is also making the acquaintance of Edeltraut, Kathi's daughter (Karina Fallenstein). The Karl Marx apartment complex was once the scene of heavy fighting between socialists and right-wing radicals - something that is forgotten by everyone except Edeltraut, who holds to her idealized vision of this earlier, tumultuous world. When Joe spies on Kathi and finds out she is housing Peter, he calls in the police accusing Peter of terrorism. Now Peter's life could be in danger, as the police get set to storm the apartment complex and arrest him. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The ever-present forces which originally gave rise to Nazism in Germany still have power in the postwar era, as this 1979 film shows. Kassbach is a grocery-store owner who has a belly full of grievances against minorities and feels privileged to take advantage of anyone who is weaker than himself. He cheats his customers, abuses his workers, and has joined a group of people who think the same way he does. They get together to knife a foreign guest-worker, and Kassbach himself shoots a man who could identify him during another "action." The final confrontation, though, comes when he must face down his son, who has espoused leftist causes. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi