Review of Import/Export (2007) by Noel M — 22 Apr 2008

As its title suggests, Ulrich Seidl's second feature film is a bleak and hard-hitting look at the parallel situations of the cross-border journeys between Eastern and Western Europe, a realistically bleak examination of lives cast adrift on the tide of sweeping changes in modern Europe. One is Olga, a young woman working as a nurse in the Ukraine, who is forced to move to Europe to look for better employment opportunities. In Austria, Pauli, a young security guard makes the opposite journey into Eastern Europe, seeking to escape his debts and the increasing urban violence and alienation he finds himself caught up in.

Depicted with a sense of documentary realism, itâ??s a straightforward depiction of everyday life, showing us a social reality we are already aware of - employment, immigration, poverty, the internet sex industry, urban alienation, the shortcomings of the health service - but showing it to us in a much more gritty, realistic manner that we are perhaps accustomed to seeing it. Avoiding grand cinematic gestures, the film forces us to view a reality that we'd rather not think too deeply about by pushing these issues far beyond the stage where they've made their point into an area that makes the viewer very, very uncomfortable indeed.