MICHAEL H. Profession: Director

Synopsis

Michael Haneke is a theorist of images, probably the most battle-hardened of his contemporaries in the exercise of deciphering images and their mise en scène. In fact it’s in this frame of mind that he undertakes most of his media interventions. Michael Haneke is a great author, as captivating as he is mysterious, a veritable Viennese ‘Gregory Arkadin‘ who is always trying to confuse the issues of his past.
Our documentary passes through the Hanekian looking glass by travelling with the director over a tenyear time-span on a journey that pings across Europe from Vienna to Paris via northern Germany and Romania. We draw closer to Haneke as we turn an unusually raw light on his work and simultaneously reveal a fascinating moralist who knows better than anyone how to denounce the dross of our contemporary
western society.
Between many of his film shoots and appearances at the Cannes Film Festival, we catch intense, unfettered moments of his thoughts about his work as we watch an oeuvre bloom under constant pressure. Isabelle Huppert and Susanne Lothar, two of his most powerful performers, discuss the rigorous and visionary approach he has to his unique mise en scène. Michael Haneke has learned through his cinema to express the 'disturbing strangeness' of the modern world, a world that has lost all its illusions and thus the very meaning of existence itself.

Cast & Crew

Director

Yves Montmayeur

Festivals/awards

2013 Tribeca, Warsaw
2014 Hong Kong

Film Info

World Sales

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