1971: “The Refusal“

The 1971 television film Der Fall Jägerstätter [The Refusal]  by Axel Corti marked the first time that the country’s Nazi past had been thematised critically in postwar Austrian film. While on the one hand actors portray the life and fate of the famous resistance fighter, interviews with family members and those who knew him give the film a second focus. Some years later this was followed by the feature films Der Bockerer (1981, Franz Antel), Heidenlöcher (1986, Wolfram Paulus), and 38 – Auch das war Wien [38 – Vienna Before the Fall] (1986, Wolfgang Glück), which take different approaches to dealing with Nazism. They coincided with the “Waldheim Affair”  and the resulting critical engagement with the country’s Nazi past. Well-known films that have since addressed similar themes include Hasenjagd [The Quality of Mercy] (1994, Andreas Gruber), Die Fälscher [The Counterfeiters] (2007, Stefan Ruzowitzky) and Murer – Anatomie eines Prozesses [Murer – Anatomy of a Trial] (2018, Christian Frosch).