Nordrand

Barbara Albert, who grew up in the Viennese working-class district on the quiet side of the Danube referred to in the title, describes her first feature as a farewell to her youth. ‘It all started in 1990. The Iron Curtain fell, we felt young and were ready to have children. Then from 1992 on we thought about the war again – but not all of us.’ Albert’s first feature is about that and about the relationship between two very different women. Last year it was selected for the competition in Venice. Tamara and Jasmin, classmates at secondary school, have lost touch for years when they bump into each other in the waiting room of a Vienna abortion clinic. Tamara, of Serbian extraction, has grown in to a beautiful young woman and works as a nurse. Her boss is boring, most of the time her boyfriend Roman is away doing military service and her family is back in war-torn Yugoslavia. Jasmin works as a waitress and likes cakes and men. After one last violent quarrel with her father, she leaves home and gets drunk with some acquaintances who leave her intoxicated on the snow covered banks of the Danube. She is found by Senad, a Serbian deserter. In the meantime, Tamara flirts with Valentin, a Rumanian adventurer on his way to America. The war just over the border seems to seep into everyday life in Vienna.