2017

11th ETHNOCINECA

International Documentary Film Festival Vienna 2017

Th, 4. – We, 10. May 2017

In its eleventh edition in 2017, ethnocineca once again unites international documentary cinema in Vienna. And again this year we are happy to announce a couple of improvements to the program: Together with the audience and numerous international filmmakers as well as guests from the field of the arts and science, the festival celebrates – with an additional seventh day – the great variety of contemporary documentary film and ethnographic film in particular. 

Our main program and the five award sections contain 54 films altogether. The winners of the three award schemes IDA, EVA and ADA will be selected by our much-appreciated juries, while the audience decides on the best film in the program for our up-and-coming filmmakers, the ethnocinecaStudent Shorts Award (ESSA). We are particularly looking forward to our newly established International Shorts Award (ISA), the winner of which will also be selected by the audience. In this year’s comprehensive side program, which contains the annual keynote lecture, a roundtable discussion, a masterclass and several film-discussions, we invite the audience to join a deepening form of debate about documentary film and especially about this year’s festival focus, Radical Minds.

Out of approximately 500 entries the festival curators have created a program, which displays a large variety of human lifeworlds: We have created our version of contemporary, critical cinema, addressing relevant social questions of our time from a multitude of perspectives and inviting the audience to chose alternative points of views. The program also seeks diverse approaches to the festival focus Radical Minds. It allows the audience to meet people from around the world, whose living conditions and personal choices encourage to think, live or imagine the world differently. We are looking at social and political utopian ideas as well as radical individual ways of living – films, which give a voice to those unheard and show what has been unseen. The festival focus Radica Minds therefore underlines the relevance of documentary film for a critical controversy with actual social, cultural and socio-political issues and wants to inspire the audience to consciously deal with the possibility of the impossible. 

A cinema about, from and for people who think differently – a cinema for mavericks, optimists and utopians. Its an invitation to change perspective on the – these days much stressed term – radicalism. The ethnocineca 2017 – radical optimistic and radical humanistic.



Trailer 2017


TEAM 2017

Sophie Bitzinger
Valerie Blankenbyl
Rocío Burchard Rodriguez
Peter Danek
Matthias Grausgruber
Marie-Christine Hartig
Hannah Hauptmann
Martin Lintner
Jörg Oschmann
Katja Seidel
Elena Staroste
Nóra Soponyai
Simone Traunmüller
Sophie Wagner

Programme Curation

International Documentary Award (IDA): Marie-Christine Hartig, Martin Lintner, Marieluise Röttger
Austrian Documentary Award (ADA): Marie-Christine Hartig, Martin Lintner, Katja Seidel
Excellence in Visual Anthropology Award (EVA): Katja Seidel, Sophie Wagner
International Shorts Award (ISA): Rocío Burchard Rodriguez, Valerie Blankenbyl
Ethnocineca Student Shorts Award (ESSA): Nóra Soponyai, Elena Staroste, Simone Traunmüller