Seeing Work Anew: Invitation to the First Vienna Labour Film Festival
From 19 to 23 May 2025, the Vienna Labour Film Festival will take place for the first time at Stadtkino Wien, creating a new forum for artistic and socio-critical engagement with work, occupations, and education. Over the course of a week, the festival will screen international feature films and documentaries that illuminate different sectors, professions, and lived realities – from care work to logistics, from the automotive industry to retail.
While labour film festivals have already become well established internationally – for example in France, Scandinavia, and the English-speaking world – the Vienna Labour Film Festival is the first of its kind in Austria. It thus provides an important impetus to bring the subjects of work and education more prominently into public consciousness.
Work, identity, resistance – films that move
The festival interweaves cinematic aesthetics with political reflection. It offers the opportunity to revisit outstanding works by filmmakers who engage deeply with the world of work, as well as to see current productions for the first time in Austria.
In doing so, the festival offers diverse perspectives on present-day challenges: How is work perceived in a society in flux? What new forms of training and professional practice are emerging? What might a fairer future of work look like?
Selection of films
The festival opens with Harun Farocki’s Workers Leaving the Factory (1995), shown as a double feature with Comparison (2009), a cinematic experiment that contrasts local production processes in different countries – presented without commentary or judgement – through the lens of the oldest and most essential building material: the clay brick.
From Stéphane Brizé’s award-winning labour trilogy, featuring Vincent Lindon in brilliant but varied roles, the festival will show The Measure of a Man (2015), which immerses the audience in the reality of an unemployed man in his fifties who must find his footing in an increasingly inhumane labour market.
Laura Carreira’s debut feature On Falling (2024) – in the tradition of Ken Loach – portrays the precarious working conditions of a migrant woman in a British warehouse, marked by relentless efficiency monitoring and social isolation.
The festival closes with Homecoming (2023), the third part of Wang Bing’s laconic yet monumental Youth trilogy – a remarkable long-term portrait of young textile workers in China. Between gruelling factory work and the annual journey home for the New Year festival, the hopes, fears, and uncertainties of a generation shaped by economic upheaval come into view.
Focus Theme 2025: Environment. Consumption. Work.
Under the motto “Environment. Consumption. Work.”, the first edition of the festival places particular emphasis on the conditions of food production, consumer behaviour, and their effects on labour and the environment.
Bottlemen (2023) follows, in striking images, the eponymous “bottlemen” who collect plastic bottles for recycling at Europe’s largest landfill site in Belgrade – gruelling labour in a toxic environment whose days are already numbered (Vienna premiere).
The Pickers – Bitter Harvest (2024) brings to the screen the often invisible seasonal and migrant workers who tend Europe’s fields under precarious conditions, raising the question of the true cost of our consumption.
In the feature film The Store (2023), the themes of environment, consumption, and labour come together: customers fighting over the cheapest bargains, homeless people searching bins for anything salvageable, and employees struggling for zero-hours contracts. Swedish director Ami-Ro Sköld has created an immersive, genre-crossing film that boldly combines stop-motion animation with live action (Austrian premiere).
Supporting programme – opening new perspectives
In addition to the film screenings, the festival will host conversations with filmmakers, panel discussions, and a supporting programme featuring vocational information and recruitment films. This fosters interdisciplinary exchange between filmmakers, education practitioners, and representatives of the world of work.
The First Vienna Labour Film Festival aims to challenge existing images and assumptions about work, spark debate, and engage new audiences – especially people who rarely attend arthouse cinemas or who are affected by social disadvantage. Young people, apprentices, adults in training, and all those interested in work, education, and social justice are particularly invited.
As part of the Future Fit Festival (waff) and thanks to cooperation with the Vienna Chamber of Labour (AK Wien), many screenings will be free of charge.
The full programme is available at: www.arbeits-film-festival.at
Contact: Jörg Markowitsch
