Allerseelen

Stylistically monochrome and reduced in its use of language, the approximately 9-minute short film Allerseelen, co-written with Simona Ascher, is a retelling of a nightmare actually experienced. For this reason, its narrative style largely dispenses with a strictly coherent and clear narrative and instead focuses on purely associative connections and dream logic. The music, which is often dominant in the sound, moves further away from usual formal structures and tonal regularities and is thus intended to merge with the general sound design – and ultimately also the diegetic sound. Recurring static noise in the sound and backgrounds often embedded in blackness in the image testify to the protagonist’s forlornness.

Allerseelen has won and was nominated for several awards. In 2021, Allerseelen was nominated for a Golden Wire award in the short film category. The following year it won Best Super Short Experimental at the Flatness Film Awards, was nominated in the Best Short Gasp selection of the Riservati Pictures Film Festival and won Best Horror/Thriller Film at the Austrian Filmfestival. In 2023, it won the gold medal along with special awards for remarkable idea and remarkable camera at the VÖFA regional championship. At the VÖFA national championship it won the silver medal and was nominated for three more awards, namely remarkable sound designremarkable picture design and remarkable filmic narrative.

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Award-winning experimental short film (9 min)

director, writer & composer
Michael J. Keplinger
story writers
Michael J. Keplinger & Simona Ascher
producers
Alexandra Bogner, Niklas Strahammer & Michael J. Keplinger
actors
Magdalena Mayer & Florentina Leitner

»Allerseelen« has a timeless quality and is internationally accessible.

Jörg A. Eggers (Austrian director, translated)

[a] psychological horror where minute after minute we keep asking ourselves: what’s gonna happen next?

Mr. Valents (Italian writer, actor, director)

(…) It’s important with films like this that you really pay attention to everything. That you always have your eyes open. (…) To continue to spin the movie further. (…) And don’t you dare ask the author what he was thinking. No! He should continue to make such films! (…) So let films like this sink in and interpret the hell out of it!

— member of VÖFA jury (transcribed, translated)

© 2024 Michael J. Keplinger