Directed by Michael Haneke • 1993 • Austria, West Germany
Starring Branko Samarovski, Thierry van Werveke, August Schmölzer

Though it was made for television, Michael Haneke’s adaptation of the novel by Austrian writer Joseph Roth—a Kafkaesque vision of the individual pitted against the unfeeling bureaucracy of the state—displays a formal sophistication nearly as striking as his theatrical work. Set in post–World War I Vienna, THE REBELLION follows the increasingly dire fortunes of Andreas Pum (Branko Samarovsky), a dedicated former soldier who lost a leg for his country but who finds himself at the mercy of a society where loyalty and obedience are rewarded only with cruelty.