North American Premiere
Total Refusal returns to MODES with new work following 2020’s dazzling live performance of Operation Jane Walk, and their anti-war masterpiece, How to Disappear. In the moments when the algorithm of their existence shows inconsistencies, the Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) of the popular action-adventure game, Red Dead Redemption, break out of their routines momentarily to display their faultiness and present something touchingly human.
Jacob Banigan
Austria
2022
English
Featured in:
MODES 3
Whimsical, questioning and utterly absorbing, a collection of animated work delving into worlds of wonder, subversion, and Marxist mystery. These works are fun and some re-construct ideas of animation, paying homage to experimentalists who came before.
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The Tree of Life
The Tree of Life follows Jack as he reflects on his 1950s Texas childhood and the death of his younger brother. Deeply spiritual and poetic, Malick’s film moves through grief, memory, time, and space. And there are dinosaurs.
Sometimes, I Imagine Them All at a Party
Fourteen years ago, Daniela Magnani Hüller survived an attempted femicide by a schoolmate. Now a filmmaker, she revisits the events surrounding that fateful incident, creating a moving collage of interviews, personal recollections, and archival material.
Image: © Bildersturm
Queen at Sea
An academic is pitted against her stepfather in a moral crisis over the care of her mother, who lives with dementia. Winner of the Silver Bear Jury Prize and Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance at the 2026 Berlinale.
Image: © Seafaring
The Story of Documentary Film – The 2000s
The Story of Documentary Film – The 2000s enters a decade shaped by 9/11, war, fear, and politics. Through films such as The Cove and Grizzly Man, these chapters trace the documentary medium's encounter with modernity as it begins to unravel.
Image: © Iraq in Fragments, 2006, dir. James Longley, USA, Daylight Factory Typecast-Pictures
Credits
Screenwriter
Total Refusal
Cinematography
Total Refusal
Editor
Total Refusal
Original Music
Adrian Haim
Director
Total Refusal (Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf)
The pseudo-marxist media guerilla collective Total Refusal explores and practices strategies for artistic intervention in contemporary computer games. They work with tools of appropriation and rededication of game resources. Their films and performances were presented among others at the Berlinale and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They received the award for Best Short Documentary Film at the 2020 Diagonale Festival of Austrian Film.