Directed by Michael Haneke • 1989 • Austria
Starring Birgit Doll, Dieter Berner, Leni Tanzer
The day-to-day routines of a seemingly ordinary Austrian family begin to take on a sinister complexion in Michael Haneke’s chilling portrait of bourgeois anomie giving way to shocking self-destruction. Inspired by a true story, the director’s first theatrical feature finds him fully in command of his style, observing with clinical detachment the spiritual emptiness of consumer culture—and the horror that lurks beneath its placid surfaces. THE SEVENTH CONTINENT builds to an annihilating encounter with the televisual void that powerfully synthesizes Haneke’s ideas about the link between violence and our culture of manufactured emotion.
Up Next in Directed by Michael Haneke
-
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance
Directed by Michael Haneke • 1994 • Austria, Germany
Starring Gabriel Cosmin Urdes, Lukas Miko, Otto GrümandlThe simultaneously random and interconnected nature of modern existence comes into harrowing focus in the despairing final installment of Michael Haneke’s trilogy. Seventy-one intricate,...
-
Three Paths to the Lake
Directed by Michael Haneke • 1976 • West Germany, Austria
Starring Ursula Schult, Guido Wieland, Walter SchmidingerAdapted from a story by celebrated writer Ingeborg Bachmann, this early television film by Michael Haneke finds the Austrian auteur already exploring some of his key themes—of fami...
-
Lemmings, Part 1: Arcadia
Directed by Michael Haneke • 1979 • Austria, West Germany
Starring Regina Sattler, Christian Ingomar, Eva LinderA significant stylistic and thematic breakthrough for director Michael Haneke that in many ways can be seen as his first mature work, the two-part television drama LEMMINGS explores t...
