Jetzt oder morgen
Director - Lisa Weber
A tiny apartment in a Viennese housing complex. Claudia lives there with her 4-year-old son Daniel, her mother Gabi, and her brother Gerhard. It forms the central setting for more than half of Lisa Weber’s documentary, a chamber piece about a working-class family struggling with long-term unemployment, a lack of money, a sense of overwhelming jadedness, and too much time to fill. But if you imagined JETZT ODER MORGEN to be an archetypical example of Austrian cinematic miserabilism, you’d be mistaken. There are, of course, heated confrontations within the family (and also between Claudia and the father of her child or her later boyfriend Marvin). The predominant feeling is of shared hardship though. The ties are strong, but the family is only half-heartedly ready to confront the stasis it find itself in. Weber met Claudia as a 10-year-old already, four years later she became pregnant – her status as a single mother is one answer to the question as to why she doesn’t find work. The other, more difficult answer is provided by Weber’s approach, which is not only intimate, but also stirringly sensitive. It’s hard to break with the habits of a class. But then again: Viennese girls always get by. (Dominik Kamalzadeh)
