Brothers Christoph and Stefan Brunner add a touch of film noir to La Cabina Festival. In thirty-minute long Blackstory, several lives will cross paths with fatal consequences. These parallel stories are shown in a split screen, where each image will complement the other and the viewer will have to ‘stay alert’ – words that Brunner recalls from his film classes with Michael Haneke at the Vienna Academy; and words he also considers the main key for film production.

Christoph Brunner was born in 1978 in Linz. He studied Film Direction in Vienna and currently resides there, as a freelance worker. Stefan Brunner, two years older than Christoph, was born in Bern, Switzerland and also studied Film Direction in Viena, where he is a scriptwriter and has worked in films such as Washing Day (2005), Krankenheit Der Jugend (2006) and now Blackstory (2012).

Blackstory received surprising reviews during its premiere in Viena: although it’s filmed by two young producers, the technical work can be compared to that of a great Hollywood production. Perhaps it was acclaimed Haneke’s classes that made both brothers work together for this project, but the result can be compared to the stories of another pair of brothers, the Cohen. Blackstory was awarded the Best Screenplay award at the Viena Film Festival in 2012.

Blackstory is one of the films selected for the Official Section of the 5th Edition of Valencia’s International Half-length Film Festival ‘La Cabina’, that will be celebrated this coming November.

Blackstory (Christoph y Stefan Brunner, 2012) from Festival La Cabina on Vimeo.