This festival, organised by the Goethe Institut, ACF London and Swiss Embassy features films from the past 10 years which have emerged from an exciting new strand of documentary film. Experimenting with formal elements that go against the grain of the standard notion of documentary, these films quite literally stage documentary material. Curated by Birgit Kohler, Performing Documentary brings a number of these films together and places them in a discursive context.

The Austrian films to be screened include Anja Salomonowitz’s Kurz davor ist es passiert and Die 727 Tage ohne Karamo. In Kurz davor the personal experiences of women who have been trafficked into prostitution are recounted by strangers - the border officer who failed to see them, the cleaner in a brothel who ignored their cries. Die 727 Tage ohne Karamo addresses another diffiuclt topic in Austria - the problems faced by those who marry or wish to marry someone from a country outside the EU. Emotional tales of forced removal and overzealous immigration officers are told by the couples affected.

The biography of a corrupt banker is presented in Thomas Fuerhapter’s Michael Berger. Eine Hysterie. The winners and loosers of the recent economic crash are examined through the actions of one individual - a young and dishonest Austrian banker in New York City.

In Tina Leisch’s critically acclaimed Gangster Girls prisoners at Austria's only women's prison, Schwarzau, include drug mules, robbers, and frauds. They share their cells and their yearnings for love, tobacco, and shower gel. They dream of their children who are far away or one of the inmates from Gerasdorf, the prison for male juveniles, brought to the women’s prison once a week for a co-ed theater workshop.

Watch trailers to the films by clicking on the titles.

For screening times and further information click here.