frame[o]ut – UNGEHORSAM
Open-air film festival

Opening Fri 18.07., 21.30h, Courtyard 8, free entry
with Martina Theininger, frame[o]ut festival director
indoor backup venue: Arena21

opening film: THE SWEET EAST
D: Sean Price Williams | US 2023 | feature film | 104min. | OV
with Talia Ryder, Ayo Edebiri, Jacob Elordi, Simon Rex a.o.
Austrian premiere
Fiction

Liliana is 17, comes from South Carolina and decides one day to break away. Instead of continuing to take part in the school trip through the east of the USA, she would rather decide for herself where the journey takes her. It will lead her from one bizarre to life-threatening encounter to the next, leaving her both more confused and more stable at the end.
The Sweet East makes it clear from the very first minutes that we are dealing with a beast of a movie in which almost anything seems possible. And yet it never lapses into arbitrariness - not least because the wild plot is held together by virtuoso staging. What initially sounds like a daring niche project turns out to be a prominent feature film: Ayo Edebiri (The Bear), Jacob Elordi (Saltburn; Priscilla; Euphoria) and Simon Rex (Red Rocket) are as much a part of the cast as Talia Ryder (Never Rarely Sometimes, Always; Stephen Spielberg's West Side Story), who leads the eccentric group. Right now, in the middle of Trump's second term, this film is more topical than ever.

Sean Price Williams may be new to the director's chair, but he is anything but a blank slate in the film world. As a celebrated cinematographer, he has left his mark on works by the Safdie Brothers (Good Time, Heaven Knows What) and Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel, Queen of Earth, Listen Up Philip) - and has stood for US independent cinema with a radical edge for years. He continues to do so as a director in his feature film debut The Sweet East. Most recently, he was responsible as cinematographer for the cinematically spectacular historical film Harvest by Athina Rachel Tsangari.

Under the motto UNGEHORSAM, frame[o]ut 2025 is showing 16 evenings of feature films, documentaries and short film programs that challenge today's viewing habits with unusual forms and at the same time show disobedient protagonists. From coming-of-age comedies to gangster thrillers, the program increasingly includes genre films that break with the respective characteristics, play with them, reinterpret them or are just a pretext to tell something completely different. They never fall into arbitrariness and instead invite you to be surprised and carried away. In this year's frame[o]ut program, being UNGEHORSAM means going your own way, rebelling against existing systems and authorities and fighting for a better common future, turning away from the law and feeling the consequences, living your own identity or showing all facets of your own personality. The frame[o]out motto 2025 calls for a cinematic dialog.

Film still © The Match Factory

In cooperation and co-production with MuseumsQuartier Wien