Ulrich Seidl

Themes such as the body, physicality, sexuality, and desire are at the core of the oeuvre of the Austrian director Ulrich Seidl (*1952 in Vienna). His trilogy of films, Paradise, has been celebrated at international film festivals such as Cannes and Venice, but it has also been the subject of controversial debate. In breathtaking tableaux, Seidl tells a three-part tale of Love, Faith, and Hope, about three women in a family, each on a vacation by herself. One is a sex tourist in Kenya, another is a missionary Catholic on the periphery of Vienna, and the third is a teenager at a diet camp. Three films, three women, three stories of longing. Seidl’s view of the protagonists’ bodies has been compared to Lucian Freud’s perspective of his models. In fact, the minimal visual shots Seidl employs—composed and aestheticized down to the last detail—stand in strong contrast to the intimate scenes. The most memorable stills from the trilogy are presented in large format in this volume.