Browse 32 movies from Essential Filmproduktion
Rita is an outcast teenager in suburban Austria, misunderstood both at school, where she's disdained by classmates, and at home, where her staunchly religious mother and temperamental father bemoan her inability to fit in with their comfortable bourgeois life. When Rita sets out to seduce her school bus driver, she sets in motion a series of events that changes everyone's lives irrevocably.
Nov 2001
A celebrity model couple are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged, alcoholic captain. What first appears Instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island in a struggle of hierarchy.
Sep 2022
A boy returns home from the institution where he grew up, but finds he is not welcome there. He fights to win the love of his family but ends up murdering them.
Jul 2010
Wrapping the audience in waves of sound, Alberi takes us on a circular journey through the Italian countryside. The marvelous natural music at the tops of the eponymous trees makes way for the rhythmic cadence of civilization—men baring axes and the natural clatter of daily life—before their unforgettable return home from the forest. The singular artistry of director Michelangelo Frammartino (Le quatro volte) is beautifully displayed in this mesmerizing homage to nature.
Apr 2013
This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.
May 2010
A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality, guided by a Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments have the same significance as historical events. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.
Nov 2019
17 year old Nói drifts through life on a remote fjord in Iceland. In winter, the fjord is cut off from the outside world, surrounded by ominous mountains and buried under a shroud of snow. Nói dreams of escaping from this white-walled prison with Íris, a city girl who works in a local gas station. But his clumsy attempts at escape spiral out of control.
Feb 2003
A man comes home to meet his mother and sister after many years away. He finds his mother living with a new boyfriend, and his sister to be grown-up. He begins to settle down in this new place by building a new home for himself on the delta. But when his sister moves in with him and the two begin a romance, there are tragic consequences.
Sep 2008
Alice, a single mother who is more dedicated to her work as a genetic engineer than to her teenage son Joe, develops a new variety of flower that is supposed to have the ability to make its owner happy thanks to its special chemical properties.
Miss Novak joins the staff of an international boarding school to teach a conscious eating class and forms a strong bond with five students that eventually takes a dangerous turn.
Sep 2023
Set in Mexico City, Carlos Reygadas's sexually explicit drama centers on a man in turmoil over his past actions. Chauffer Marcos feels compelled to reveal a dark secret to his boss's daughter, Ana, a wealthy woman who works as a prostitute just for the thrill of it. Marcos confesses that he and his wife committed a crime that ended in horrible tragedy. Haunted by his past, Marcos searches for redemption.
May 2005
A taciturn Romanian divorcee acquires a hunting rifle and initiates a killing spree.
Mar 2011
Heinrich wishes to conquer death through love, and when he meets Henriette, the wife of a business acquaintance, she expresses interest in a suicide pact when she learns she has a terminal illness.
May 2014
In order to escape her isolation, wheelchair-bound Christine makes a life changing journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains.
Sep 2009
When Irene takes a position at a hotel deep in the woods of the Austrian Alps, she soon discovers the girl she replaced vanished without a trace.
Dec 2004
After getting out of prison, small-time crook Mardar stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his long-lost lover, who he attempted to kidnap 3 years ago.
Apr 2000
An ongoing experiment, evolving from a biopic about Soviet physicist Lev Landau into a large scale project – part cinematic cycle, part behavioral experiment – involving hundreds of participants from around the world. Combining elements of film, theatre, science, psychology, architecture, visual arts and performance, it has created a complex and absorbing world that has to be lived as much as seen.
Apr 2018
An absurdist, surrealistic and shocking pitch-black comedy, which moves freely from nightmare to fantasy to hilariously deadpan humour as it muses on man’s perpetual inhumanity to man.
Oct 2014
Against the tumultuous backdrop of Iran's 1953 CIA-backed coup d'état, the destinies of four women converge in a beautiful orchard garden, where they find independence, solace and companionship.
Jul 2009
A film crew gathers in a hotel near Wuhan to resume production of a film that was interrupted ten years earlier, but an unexpected event once again disrupts the preparations.
Oct 2024