Birgit Doll Movies

Two Austrian women who have long dreamed of going to America find a bit of America has come to them in this quirky comedy-drama. Lili (Nina Proll) fixes cars for a living, while her best friend Betty (Sonja Romei) grooms dogs. Both Lili and Betty are fascinated by American culture and want to visit the United States someday, so they're first in line when second-division Elvis impersonator "El Bresli" (Gerald Votava) arrives in town to play a show. To her delight, Betty lands a date with the Faux King, and Lili catches the eye of his road manager, and for an evening they get to imagine what it must be like to be the consorts of the king of rock & roll. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Austrian director Jessica Hausner debuts with this psychological study about a drifter whose search for happiness eventually drives him mad. The film focuses on a nameless man with a tape recorder who aggressively asks people if they are happy. He questions his neighbor, a shy young woman who just discovered love. He finds her contentment baffling and infuriating. Inter-View was screened at the 1999 Sarajevo Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Financed in West Germany and filmed in the Soviet Union, Hard to Be a God (Es Ist Nicht Leicht Ein Gott Zu Sein) is set some thousand years or so in the future, when all forms of hostility and aggression have been purged from the earth. A group of space travellers stumble upon an alien civilization that seems mired in the Middle Ages. Astronaut Edward Zentara is sent out to explore this primitive land, and in so doing he becomes involved in war and bloodshed for the first time in his life. Eventually, he leads the downtrodden local citizens into battle against his fellow Earthlings. Produced on an epic scale over a six-year period, Hard to Be a God is stronger in its action sequences than in its ponderous dialogue exchanges. Watch for German director Werner Herzog in a brief opening-scene bit. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In a true story beginning in the year before the outbreak of WW II in France, Charlotte (Birgit Doll), a young woman sent to the safety of her grandfathers in the south of France by her Jewish family in Germany, starts to paint pictures that recall some of the terrors she has already known in Germany before leaving. The movie slips back and forth between the memories her paintings conjure up, and her life in France. At first, back in Germany, Charlotte was convinced that her own optimistic, romantic outlook would save her from all harm. But then that self-deception fades a little as her father, a doctor, is picked up by the Gestapo. Even though her father's release is finally secured by Charlotte's step-mother (an opera singer), the situation steadily deteriorates until her parents send her away in the hope that she will be better off in France. Once there, the harsh reality intrudes so much on her life that not even her paintings can afford her any solace. Her despair becomes stronger as the Nazi atrocities begin to multiply, affording her little real hope of survival. An epilogue to the movie tells the audience the fate of the real Charlotte, since the movie ends before that time. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide