How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the Other World
Come essere normali e la stranezza dell’altro mondo
by
MOVIE CATEGORY
Twenty-six-year-old Pia leaves a psychiatric hospital to put her life back together. She’s been diagnosed with an abnormality that would imply the normality of the outside world; yet the world doesn’t seem much better, between heartache, exhausting jobs, psychotropic substances and social stigma. A source of great instability is certainly the absolute uncertainty in which her parents, Elfie and Klaus, live in the suburbs of Vienna. Should she become a monster to destroy this absurd world, or is it perhaps better to be the heroine who saves it?
In the spectrum of possible relationships between the Self and the Other, we can seek all the most pressing questions about identity, self-discovery, and family. Perhaps even more so, about the possibility of understanding the boundaries between one’s own madness and that of those who call themselves normal.
DIRECTORY
He lives and works between Graz, Vienna and Berlin. He studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, where he studied directing with Michael Haneke, and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he studied with Dietrich Diederichsen. Winner of several scholarships, from the Berlinale Talents to the Susan Batson Studio in New York, he has worked as both a creative and a curator in various European contexts (Diagonale Graz, CineStyria) and has won several awards with his early short films (notably the Austrian Film Award in 2014 for Erdbeerland). His first film, How to Be Normal and the Oddness of the World, was selected for the 2025 Berlin Film Festival in the Perspectives section dedicated to first films.
