2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Old Harry I saw this on TV and it was prefaced by a short interview with the director / co-writer. His aim was to show raw reality and if that meant some sequences bordered on the over extended then so be it. The longer your nose was rubbed in it (my words not his) the better you would learn the truth. Trouble is everything seemed over extended so the technique lost its impact.Nothing in the film offended me as such, certainly not the graphic nudity of the sex-for-money scenes which were part of the films core - human exploitation, who is most degraded by it and how do you get out from under it. In his intro the director repeatedly stated that the truth does no need to be embellished. However I felt that philosophy was an after the fact justification of a film which seemed badly wanting in terms of editorial input and basic direction. Most scenes were in medium shot using a single camera. Maybe that's all he had. For me that single technique used in such a long film ended up distancing me from the characters. It created a peep show feel where what was promised were insights.Although I never lost sympathy and concern for the plight of the Ukrainian nurse and some of her charges I ended not caring about almost everyone else - largely because of the 'distancing' camera work.Many viewers already know that some people with a little money / power can be complete bastards to people with neither and desperate for either. It doesn't take over 2 hours to sell that message.Watch it on DVD - have your thumb hovering over fast forward.

Scott Lanaway I'm not going to write much here. I am open to dark films (in fact I tend to prefer them). But this was one of the most depressing, frustrating films I have ever seen. Long, long, long cut scenes of depressing or morbid circumstances (such as people suffering in palliative care, very raw). The director establishes the mood and the dynamic between the characters and then stays on the scene, often with minimal dialogue for 4-5 minutes - agonizingly long. This film is not an exploration of existential depression -- this film IS existential depression. The one 'warm' scene in the film where Olga dances with the old man, felt to me like a brief smile before being sucked down a black hole - which is what this film felt like.The sole mandate seemed to be to show that life is sh*t and then you die - mission accomplished.

paul2001sw-1 Many film's about sad, boring lives are themselves boring (and not truly sad). Not so Ulrich Siedl's remarkable 'Import/Export', which tells a simple, and fundamentally depressing, story at great length, but with compelling naturalism. Not only that, but Siedl shows an uncanny ability to find interesting shots: the film has a haunting quality, and in every scene there's something that draws the viewer's attention and makes one think. The plot, such as it is, tells the story of two people, a Ukranian woman to emigrates to Austria in search of a better life, and an Austrian man who ends up in Ukraine; in Hollywood, their stories would inevitably be drawn together, but Siedl keeps them in parallel throughout. One link is that both are involved (at different ends) in the Ukranian sex industry, and Siedl's uncompromising depiction of this attracted some notoriety for this movie; but it's a long way from a titillating film.The acting is excellent, and the way the characters evolve is fascinating. Ekatarina Rak's Olga is allowed to inch slowly towards a better life in Austria, albeit at a high price. Paul Hofmann's Pauli is even more interesting, a loner and misfit denied the chance by his environment to become a good person; disaffected from his present life, he can find no route map to another one. Not only do the two stories not converge, but one ends with a lengthy series of hospital scenes in which the origin of the central character is of decreasing importance; this could be a film about lonely people anywhere. Indeed, for all the film's "naturalism", it's depiction of social reality might perhaps be questioned, I would have guessed this movie was set in 1997 rather than 10 years later (although my own estimate of reality is based on the newspapers, so it may well be this that is wrong). Certainly the film is not an explicit political indictment. But it is a sympathetic and original insight into existential loneliness and the harshness of life in the modern world.

arkid77 There have been many films in recent years, particularly European ones themed around what has become clearly one of the most important humanitarian and social issues to haunt the new century; immigration. Naturally a huge complex subject and many films have already touched some of the basic points as to why certain peoples have in the first place emigrated and then the problems they faced in their new world; often very serious ones being horrifically exploited in the hands of others.Still, I think it would be wrong to conclude that Ulrich Seidl's challenging film is a discourse purely on this. While it does genuinely highlight many vital questions about immigration that I'm sure many people would rather not think about (let alone willingly watch when they go for some light relief in a cinema!), I think that the main purpose of the film is to try to make us understand the actions of to two very different young people, Olga and Pauli, The two characters we spend the entire film following while at the same time provoking us to question our own expectations and assumptions about them and others.It just so happens that these characters both want to escape their very upsetting realities and even more worrisome futures. Both do this by leaving their home lands. Olga leaves Ukraine for Austria, and Pauli goes in the opposite direction.Both characters never interact with each other or cross each others paths – thank goodness, it would be a very worn cliché if they had. Instead we are left at the end of this provoking film with many unanswered questions about the actions we have witnessed, what drives them and where are they going.The film is incredibly refreshing for its lack of clichés I felt. At many points Seidl sets up our expectations using quite classical narrative techniques and in almost every case, what we think is about to occur doesn't. The paths both take are incredibly believable, helped enormously by the use of non actors throughout the entire film. It's really hard to forget your watching something that has been constructed when it features so many unnerving scenes of real people that are clearly not acting, just "playing" themselves. Both characters, especially Pauli is quite different from the 1st impressions we are given and its incredibly refreshing and sometimes relieving that our worst fears or own clichés about who these people may be are proved to be wrong.The only obvious cliché I found was Pauli's disgusting step father Michael. I felt this made an important point in itself, to counter the often very negative news stories people in many western 1st world countries are fed about immigrants. In this film, a film by a developed 1st world European nation, the most unsympathetic low character is from said 1st world country - the land of the film maker himself! - the characters actions while he is aware are an important turning of the tables, reminding us as to how "we" may be seen or act when abroad.Although this is left completely open at the rolling credits there is a very subtle positivism that the very compassionate direction and writing leaves us with I found. While anything could happen after the last shot, it seems clear that both now have at least faith; a life to believe in, one worth struggling for.