A refined, ironic and humorous approach to the issue of immigrants and refugees in Europe. Houchang Allahyari consciously chose to make a comedy; he wanted to reach a broad cinema audience with his ideas about and experiences with the clash of cultures.Protagonist is Ali Mohamed (played by Fery Farokhad, a well-known Iranian singer and actor) who has come to Vienna with his son and younger sister from Iran. He is not fleeing and Vienna is not his final destination. He wants to spend some time in the city he has got to know indirectly as a German teacher and a fan of Sissi films. However reality is nothing like Sissi Austria and he is treated like any other foreigner or refugee on arrival: with hostility and great suspicion about his intentions. He has strict islamic ideas which do not interest his host country in the least. He also loses control over his son and his sister, who adapt to the norms of their new surroundings more quickly than he does.I Love Vienna is largely set in a lodging house for refugees, a melting-pot of nationalities and a source of comic misunderstandings and incidents. A relationship — at first farcical and later more and more moving — between Ali Mohamed and Marianne, the (ex)wife of the lodging-house owner. The set-backs which Ali Mohamed has to put up with before he can come to terms with the situation in which he finds himself repeatedly give rise to anecdotal and humorous scenes in which Allahyari involves very colourful types from the population of Vienna.
