Director: Barbara Albert
Screenplay: Kathrin Resetarits
Photography: Christine A. Maier
Editor: Niki Mossböck
Music: Lorenz Dangel
Cast: Maria Dragus, Devid Striesow, Lukas Miko, Katja Kolm, Maresi Riegner, Johanna Orsini-Rosenberg, Stefanie Reinsperger, Susanne Wuest, Christoph Luser
Production: NGF, Looks Film
Distribution: Playtime
Year: 2017
Country: Austria
Length: 97′
Synopsis: It is 1777 in Vienna. Maria Theresia von Paradis, a blind 18-year-old “wunderkind” pianist has lost her eyesight overnight when she was three years old. After countless failed medical experiments, her parents take her to the estate of controversial “miracle doctor” Franz Anton Mesmer, where she joins a group of outlandish patients. She enjoys the liberal household in a Rococo world and tastes freedom for the first time, but begins to notice that as Mesmer’s treatment brings back her eyesight, she is also losing her cherished musical virtuosity.
Born in Vienna in 1970, Barbara Albert studied Directing and Screenwriting at the Vienna Film Academy. After having introduced her short films at several festivals, her first feature film Nordrand was internationally acclaimed after its screening in the competition of Venice International Film Festival in 1999. In the same year, Barbara founded a production company by the name “Coop99” together with Martin Gschlacht, Jessica Hausner, and Antonin Svoboda. She has produced films such as Grbavica, Darwin’s Nightmare, Sleeper, and Lovely Rita, while her career as a screenwriter involved working with other screenwriter-directors, namely Jasmila Zbanic, Andrea Staka, Ruth Mader, and Michael Glawogger. After Free Radicals, Falling, and The Dead and the Living, which premiered in the film competitions at San Sebastian (Spain), Venice (Italy), and Locarno (Switzerland), Mademoiselle Paradis is Barbara’s 5th feature film. Her films have received numerous awards. She is a teacher and the vice president of Film University Babelsberg “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam (Germany) and has been living in Berlin ever since 2010. In 2016, she co-founded a Berlin-based production company called CALA Film together with the producers of Mademoiselle Paradis: Martina Haubrich and Michael Kitzberger. Her next project is developing her next feature film Secrets from the Russian Tea Room, which will be taking place in New York. She will be starting with the pre-production later this year.
Piazza Fortebraccio 6th July h. 10.10 pm – Premiere