"Mister Universo:" Film Screening and Discussion with Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel

Screening Details

Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel are the recipients of the 2016 Erste Bank's MoreVALUE Film Award, which they received for Mister Universo at the 2016 Viennale. On the occasion of their one-month residency at Deutsches Haus at NYU, Deutsches Haus co-presents together with Anthology Film Archives, Erste Bank, and the Austrian Cultural Forum seven screenings of Mister Universo (2016), from Friday, July 21, through Thursday, July 27, at 7:30 p.m. Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel will be present for an audience Q&A and to discuss their work.

Mister Universo, in Italian with English subtitles, 2016, 90 min, DCP.

Film synopsis: Young Tairo, a lion tamer with a big smile and a big heart, lives happily among the circus caravans alongside his acrobat girlfriend (Wendy Weber) and the rest of their tight-knit community. Hardworking Tairo's burly exterior hides a sensitive core; he's a genuinely gentle man with a superstitious streak. When his iron horseshoe lucky charm goes missing, Tairo is unable to perform his pre-show ritual and consequently can no longer do his act in front of a crowd. Recalling that the talisman was given to him in childhood by Arthur "Mister Universo" Robin, Tairo embarks on a quest to find the famous circus strongman and retrieve a copy of the beatified horseshoe.

About the Filmmakers:

Born in Bolzano, Italy in 1971, Tizza Covi lived in Paris and Berlin before studying photography in Vienna. Rainer Frimmel, born in Vienna in 1971, also studied photography in Vienna. Since 1996 they work together on films, theatre, photography. In 2002 they founded their own film production company Vento Film.  They won several awards for their documentaries, including the Wolfgang Staudte Award at the Berlinale for Babooska. La Pivellina, their first feature, was awarded the Europa Cinemas Label at the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes and was Austria`s offical entry for the Oscars 2011. Their second feature film The Shine of Day premiered in the international competition in Locarno 2012 and won the Silver Leopard for Best Actor. Their third feature film Mister Universo was also premiered in Locarno in 2016 and won several prices, among others the Europa Cinema Label and the Fipresci Award. Currently, they are working on a documentary movie.

About the MoreVALUE Film Award:

Since 2011, each annual edition of the Viennale (Vienna International Film Festival) has featured the presentation of the MoreVALUE Film Award to one or more Austrian filmmakers whose films are included in the festival. Designed to showcase the best of Austrian cinema, the award was founded by Erste Bank, the Viennale’s main sponsor, and is awarded by an independent jury. The award brings a cash prize as well as a one-month residency as a visiting film scholar hosted and organized by the Deutsches Haus at NYU. The screenings are co-organized by the Deutsches Haus at NYU and the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Anthology Film Archives has presented the award-winning films in the past, and they continue the tradition this year with special screenings of both of the 2015 winners: Jakob Brossmann’s Lampedusa in Winter and Claudia Larcher’s video work Self.