Special program "Escaping Realities“  

The Commune of Friedrichshof, a cult-like community in the Austrian Burgenland founded by Viennese action artist Otto Mühl in 1971, was to produce a completely new human being in the 1970s and 80s. It was a highly contestable artistic and social experiment: the basic elements of the project were common sexuality, common property, the combination of happening and body art as well as the consistent doing away with all two-person or family relationships. However, as often happens in ostensibly egalitarian communities, dynamics and structures emerged which evoked the perfect mechanisms of terrorist regimes rather than an attempt at ideal democracy. The large-scale social experiment ended in 1988 when Otto Mühl faced extensive criminal proceedings. The film looks back on the contexts of self-delusion in this crude utopia from the perspectives of five former children of the commune. It makes us wonder how differently they coped with the explosive mixture of those experiences and how they live their lives today.

Festivals and Awards

International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, Germany, 2009
Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Germany, 2009 – Honorary Mention
Diagonale, Festival of Austrian Film, Graz, Austria, 2010 - Diocese Graz-Seckau Prize for Best Documentary
Vukuvar Film Festival, Croatia, 2010 – the Award for Best Documentary
DOXA Documentary Film Festival, Vancouver, Canada, 2010
Planete Doc Review Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland, 2011

Juliane Grossheim

Juliane Grossheim was born in Berlin, Germany in 1982. From 2001 to 2003 she studied art history, literature and musicology at the Freie Universität Berlin. From 2002 to 2003 she studied photography at the New School for Photography in Berlin. She then went on to study film at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, graduating with her film The Children of the Commune. Grossheim lives and works in Berlin. 

Selected Filmography

Prelude / Vorspiel (2005)
Modesty is Fine / Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier (2007)