Good News: Newspaper Salesmen, Dead Dogs and Other People from Vienna

In his first feature length documentary, Ulrich Seidl examines the painful position of Asian street cleaners and Romanian newsvendors that have come to Austria in the hope of a better life. They must manage to stay warm in wintry Vienna. Hospitality proves to be a limited notion in a country bordering on the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia. The refugees must tap all their resourcefulness to try and stay alive. Newsvendors are disregarded, just like dead dogs. Seidl shows how the Austrian society alienates people from themselves and each other and what the true face of modern Europe looks like in his eyes. Seidl said about his documentary: "For every image of a well-dressed Viennese lady walking through the streets with her pampered dog, I present two of the underbelly of Viennese immigrant workers. To me, that is a fundamental aspect of the real, day-to-day Vienna."