Lebenslinien III – Elisabeth. Die Erde versinkt

Vienna, 1938: Elisabeth, known as Liesi (Eva Linder), works in a public bath. Her father is unemployed and "taxed out", the family huddles together in the kitchen of the council flat. "My friends call me Elisa," says the young woman, who dreams of a better life and goes to the dance café with her friend Dolly (Maria Bill). "You have to know where you belong," her mother grumbles, "it doesn't belong to us, to the reds, the have-nots".

Elisabeth moves out and begins an affair with the young Nazi Albert (Dietrich Siegl). In Lebenslinien, director Käthe Kratz tells the story of Austria's political and social upheavals through the fates of women from four generations, precisely researched and with an unsparing but never hopeless view of the power relations and the room for manoeuvre within them. Angela Hareiter has transformed the foyer of the Wiener Konzerthaus into a dance café, inspired by Duchamp and Meret Oppenheim. "The most amusing thing about it: nobody noticed," says Hareiter. (J.P.)