Dog Days (Directors Cut)

Famed for his controversial documentaries Models and Animal Love, Ulrich Seidl makes his first fiction film with this impassioned attack on the banality and emptiness of modern suburban life. Using a documentary shooting style and mostly non-actors, Seidl weaves together a series of vignette story lines into a tapestry of loneliness and quiet desperation. A retired old man obsesses over meaningless information in life -- the weight of his groceries, and noise level of the neighborhood. A faded beauty queen's devotion to her boyfriend ends after an ugly night at the discotheque. A couple who has long since divorced though still lives under the same roof engages in a psychological war of attrition, trying to force the other into moving out the house. A young teacher's date with her boyfriend turns unexpectedly into a drunken orgy. This film won the prestigious Golden Lion at the 2001 Venice Film Festival.