Besuch im Bubenland

There’s the carpenter with the folding electric bike who didn’t finish high school and talks about his “cuckoo children”. There’s the blacksmith who categorizes himself as 100% manly. There’s the old farmer Willi, the former mayor, who gives his cows names; the young current mayor almost became a professional football and can’t pronounce the word Ich. While painting, an artist thinks about what he has neglected and a retired small business owner has to carry on the company himself following the death of his son. The men with whom Katrin Schlösser seeks conversation in her documentary BESUCH IM BUBENLAND (Austria 2024) live in the Südburgenland, a sparsely populated region in the east of Austria. They belong to different generations and milieus, but share certain experiences: failed relationships, the blows of fate, their close links to their home region. The filmmaker encounters them with questions, curiosity, kindness and her cellphone camera and offers them an opportunity for self-reflection. Most of them take advantage of it. (Birgit Kohler)