Import/Export

Import/Export (2007) is a drama from Austrian director Ulrich Seidl that you can watch online on iFILM. Two lives cross a poor Europe in opposite directions — one heading west, the other east — and the film follows both without ever letting them meet.

Olga is a nurse from Ukraine who can't earn enough to raise her child. She travels to Austria and slides from hospital work down to mopping floors in a nursing home, cleaning up other people's old age and shame. Paul is an unemployed security guard from Vienna who can't find a reason to get out of bed; he follows his stepfather east to install slot machines and lands in the crumbling tower blocks of the former Eastern Bloc. Their stories run in parallel, mirror halves of the same hardship.

Seidl shoots in long, static takes with almost no music, mixing trained actors with non-professionals, watching bodies, humiliation and the selling of the self without judgment or comfort. The film played in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. It's heavy, demanding work — but if you value the kind of unflinching European arthouse Haneke makes, these 135 minutes earn their weight. Stream Import/Export (2007) online on iFILM.