CHARMS ZWISCHENFALLE European Union Film Showcase

Welcome to Charm’s Incidents, an intense
but humorOtJS reverie on the life of forgotten
Soviet dadaist Daniil Charms. Charms
wrote one book before dying in a Nazi
prison camp during the war. Vienna-based
director-writer Michael Kreihsl has adapted
the various poems and sentences into
an almost-story about a poor Russian poet
who lives in Vienna, speaks German and
has several bizarre adventures. He falls in
love with a woman who keeps changing
size as well as her mind, is picked up by
the police in a Kafkaesque way, and has
his life narrated by a stranger who keeps
popping up. Oliver Bokelberg’s camerawork
is appropriately brooding and dark.
Production designers Renate Martin and
Andreas Donhauser also ensure that the
low-budget enterprise sticks in the mind. –
Eric Hansen, Variety