71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls)

To complete his “trilogy of glaciation,” Haneke created a complex narrative examining the day-to-day lives of various residents of Vienna. A young Romanian boy slips into Austria in a truck full of home appliances and survives on the streets. One middle-aged couple has a go at foster parenting a particularly alienated young girl. Another couple deals with a very sickly infant and a suffocating marriage. A bank teller treats her father like any other customer in line – efficiently and crisply. Throughout these various lives, television images of Bosnia, Michael Jackson, and other contemporary horrors are always playing in the background. Just as situations seem to be improving for some of the characters, several of them are in a bank when a young man, who simply wants a functioning ATM, explodes with gun in hand. The multiple fragments finally weave themselves into a blood-splattered pattern.     -- Chale Nafus, Director of Programming, Austin Film Society