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A dazzling amour fou involving Alma Mahler and Oskar Kokoschka.
Vienna, 1912: Following Gustav Mahler's death, his young widow, Alma Mahler, is a wealthy woman with the high society of Vienna at her feet. But Alma detests convention. She becomes interested in the enfant terrible of the art scene, expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka, whose radical works are the source of scandal. A passionate affair begins in which different lifestyles collide. Oskar considers Alma his muse and is jealous and possessive. But Alma has her own ambition of becoming an artist and a composer in a day and age when such careers are unusual for women. A play for power and dependence ensues, leading Alma and Oskar to the brink of self-destruction.
Meet the director
Dieter Berner
Dieter Berner, born in 1944, attended the Max Reinhardt seminar in Vienna and Berlin, after which he performed as an actor at the Vienna Volkstheater for two years. Since 1973 he has mainly been a film and theater director and has also written screenplays. In 1989 he played the leading role in Michael Haneke's film DER SIEBENTE KONTINENT (1989), which premiered at Cannes. Dieter Berner achieved wider recognition as a film director with the six films of the multiple award-winning ALPENSAGA. His cinema work includes ICH ODER DU (1984), a film with underground Viennese rock star Hansi Lang; the internationally acclaimed BERLINER REIGEN (2006) and KRANKHEIT DER JUGEND (2009), and most recently EGON SCHIELE – TOD UND MÄDCHEN (2016). Since 1983, Dieter Berner has taught film directing, screenwriting, and film acting at various film schools in Vienna, Munich, and Berlin. From 2004 to 2009, he was a professor at the Film University Babelsberg "Konrad Wolf".