Import/Export

(Palisades Tartan Video, 1.26.2010)

Six full years after completing his first fiction feature (Dog Days), acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ulrich Seidl returned in 2007 with Import/Export, a bleak but rewarding look at the rock-bottom struggles of a young man and woman in the industrial wastelands of Eastern Europe. Paul is a struggling Austrian who lives with his mother and stepfather, while unsuccessfully seeking steady employment and attempting to avoid his seedy, underworld creditors. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, a nurse and single mother named Olga similarly struggles to make ends meet. While their lives are unrelated, Paul and Olga eventually switch countries in a futile effort to find better lives for themselves.

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