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A project by Israeli filmmaker Micha Shagrir was the next installment in the Homeland series he launched in 2004 with “Linz, Bischofstraße 7.”

This time, three film crews visited Upper Austrians living abroad: a landscape gardener in Namibia, an NGO staffer in Haiti and a retired bus driver in Israel. The film describes their relationship with the land they left and the one in which they now live.
There are few plants in the Namibian desert. Most of the greenery used by Tom Pree, a landscape gardener originally from Perg, is not indigenous to this region. Nevertheless, there is a plant found in Namibia that’s named after the Austrian botanist who discovered and classified it in 1859. WELWITSCHIA MIRABILIS shows life in the endless expanses of desert and sea.
The Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince is the current home of Linz native Regina Tauschek, a woman who’s spent years living in the world’s most dangerous places. The Austrian Foreign Ministry officially advises travelers to avoid Haiti. ZWASO (Creole for bird) is an account of life spent between UN soldiers’ pump-action shotguns and the Caribbean attitude towards life.
Yechezkeal (né Richard) Mendler was born in 1923 in Linz. In 1938, he was forced to leave the rather cold banks of the Danube for the hot beaches of the Mediterranean. He made his way alone; his mother and his younger brother Albert followed him to Palestine in 1940. As a retiree in Tel Aviv today, he enjoys taking long walks for the sake of his health and to meet other former Linzers.
Shagrir’s film was presented at CROSSING EUROPE 2009 and screened several times at STADTKINO. In December 2009, UPPER AUSTRIANS WITHOUT BORDERS was shown at the Jerusalem Film Festival.


WHAT // Film (93 min, English with German subtitles)
WHERE // Moviemento Cinema
WHEN // at the Crossing Europe Film Festival (21. & 26. April 2009) and as a part of STADTKINO