Opening
Stadtkino Wien
Monday, 18 May 2026 I 19.30
Short Film Programme
We open the 2nd Vienna Labour Film Festival together with the Vienna Employment Promotion Fund (waff) with a special film night and at the same time start the Future Fit Festival 2026.
Together with Vienna Shorts and Tricky Women the opening of the Vienna Labour Film Festival explores the many facets of women’s work – whether paid employment, domestic work or care work. Documentaries, feature films and animated films offer a variety of approaches in terms of both aesthetics and content. Through dialogue with filmmakers and curators, the festival’s theme crystallises into a multifaceted, focused film evening, hosted by Petra Erdmann (Ö1, FM4).
Opening remarks by Ilkim Erdost (Vienna Chamber of Labour) and Marko Miloradovic (waff).
Film overview:
Les résultats du féminisme
Alice Guy | F 1906
The roles of heteronormativity are reversed: men who adorn their hair with flowers do the housework and devote themselves to sewing and ironing. Women sit in bars, drinking, smoking and flirting. In the end, the men rebel, and everything returns to ‘normal’.
Kein Wunder
Lia Sudermann & Simon Nagy | A 2024)
This Essaymovie explores the Erfindung der HausfrauUsing newspaper photo archives from the 1950s and 60s, the discussion covers the economic miracle, faulty household appliances, the portrayal of the nuclear family, and the call for pay for housework.
Mother’s Child
Naomi Noir | NL 2024
This animated film follows Mary, who can barely catch her breath as she juggles motherhood with the full-time care of her non-verbal son. Bureaucracy, sleep deprivation and isolation are pushing her to her limits. When yet another humiliating encounter with the authorities shatters her fragile equilibrium, reality begins to blur. Finding beauty in everyday life has never seemed so difficult.
Intermittent & Continous
Olivia Hird | GB 2025
In a quarry in the Peak District, a male-dominated working environment, Rita holds her own with quiet determination and a keen sense of sound. Through industrial and interpersonal listening, a poetic reflection emerges on attention, memory and experience inscribed in the body.
Thread Tension
Ruby Mastrodimos | GB 2023
‘Thread Tension’ takes us to a British sewing factory in the 1980s, where a mysterious phenomenon throws the daily routine into disarray. Caught between pressure, exhaustion and the supernatural, three women find themselves on a collision course. What initially appears to be mass hysteria gradually reveals itself to be a collective uprising.
