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Berlinale Shorts<\/h5>\n
Ein Unfall<\/i> marks the directorial debut of Angelika Spangel, who studies in the Film Academy Vienna\u2019s Camera Technology and Cinematography programme. She wrote the screenplay together with fellow student Sophia Wiegele, who also did the camerawork, and they were joined by Shirin Hooshmandi (production) and Daniel Rutz (editing). The death of dozens of pigs at a farm, a car accident faked by a teenager, and a game played by school students at the expense of a man with a disability: the three stories in this film revolve around unusual accidents in a village. \u201cIt\u2019s guilt, shame, and responsibility that are my central themes, here. My aim was not to strike a moralising tone but to ask: When is something recognised as an accident or an emergency and when isn\u2019t it\u2014especially if the situation looks different than it actually is when viewed from the outside? And when does who feel (or not feel) responsible for what?\u201d says Spangel. \u201cI wanted to show sincere feelings of guilt and shame.\u201d<\/p>\n Being a camerawoman herself, she developed her film\u2019s idea based on a visual inspiration\u2014an image of three women in a field. \u201cThe initial concept for this film was not a screenplay but rather a group of stories structured in images. We put these images together just like one would a puzzle,\u201d recalls Spangel. Together with camerawoman Wiegele, she conceived very flat, template-like pictures. \u201cOur deliberate foregoing of depth and minimisation of the images\u2019 three-dimensionality was aimed at lending the film an unreal quality and facilitating some abstraction so that the film\u2019s scenes would take on a universal character. After all, I didn\u2019t want to tell just some village story,\u201d Spangel explains.<\/p>\n Working with the children in her film was a particular pleasure for the director: \u201cDespite the large number of retakes we did, they managed to do each one with lots of authenticity and great directness thanks to their strong presence.\u201d Most of the other actors were likewise laypeople. One role, for instance, was played by Spangel\u2019s father. Their shooting location was the Lower Austrian village where Spangel grew up: \u201cIt was challenging for me to do filming work like this so close to my own personal haunts. But I quickly noticed how if I wanted to tell these specific stories in a precise and authentic way, I had to firmly commit to doing so.\u201d Though her courage and long, hard work on this film didn\u2019t end up netting a Berlinale Bear, the positive experience of being festival invitees was what counted for Spangel and her team. Several team members and actors were on hand for the film screenings, following which they fielded questions from their interested audiences. For her future film projects, Spangel hopes that her Berlinale Shorts nomination will improve her chances of getting funded.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s European Film Market (EFM)\u2014an industry fair that takes place annually alongside the Berlinale\u2014staged its inaugural Film School Summit, an event that offered students of 18 participating film schools from 13 countries a diverse programme of lectures as well as formats for exchange with film industry representatives. From Film Academy Vienna, four production students and two directing students took part. This delegation was accompanied by the Film Academy Vienna production professor Michael Kitzberger. \u201cThe students have a huge interest in international collaboration. And to this end, it\u2019s important to get to know each other, get inspired, and question things. A change of perspectives always benefits constructive interaction,\u201d says Kitzberger of just why initiatives like the Film School Summit and other formats for up-and-coming film professionals at the Berlinale are valuable. And: \u201cIt\u2019s also important to network internationally and figure out together just how projects might be realised,\u201d says the production professor with an eye to film funding opportunities in different countries.<\/p>\n Moreover, Film Academy Vienna was once again a cooperating partner in the Berlinale\u2019s networking initiative ENCOURAGE Film Talents, which promotes exchange between up-and-coming filmmakers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. This event included screenings of selected films from the participating film schools such as this year\u2019s Film Academy Vienna entry Dead Air<\/i> (director: Andrej Haring, screenplay: Andrej Haring & Joseph Cyril Stoisits, production: Skander Kourgli, cinematography: Florian Noever, editing: Daniel Morawitz, VFX: Lukas Kampichler). A renewed field trip to Berlin is planned for next year, when the Berlinale will once again turn the city into a nexus of cinematic art.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every February, Berlin becomes the centre of the cinematic world. The Berlinale, whose competition awards the famed Golden and Silver Bears, is one of the world\u2019s biggest film festivals. It boasts a varied array of programme sections, among them the short film competition Berlinale Shorts\u2014which, in 2026, included a first-ever film from Film Academy Vienna: Ein Unfall [An Accident] by Film Academy student Angelika Spangel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":13375,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1659,1662,1052,766,179],"class_list":["post-13372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film","tag-2026-2","tag-berlinaleshorts","tag-filmakademiewien","tag-berlinale","tag-film"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13372"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13430,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13372\/revisions\/13430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/portrait-angelika-spangel-sw-682x1024.jpg\")
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Film School Summit<\/h5>\n