The Seventh Continent

Georg, an engineer, Anna, an optometrist, and their daughter Eva. The film covers three years, from 1987 to 1989, in three parts. The first two are daily routine: breakfast, work, shopping, the car wash. In the third the family decides to leave everything behind. It is Michael Haneke's first feature. The screenplay is based on a real case. Its most argued-over scene is the destruction of money. Haneke saw it coming and explained: in today's society the idea of destroying money is more taboo than parents killing their child and themselves. The other decision worth arguing about is the framing: faces are almost never shown. The camera looks at hands, objects and surfaces, and people stay fragmented inside the frame. It won the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 67 percent from six reviews; Metacritic at 89 from seven. Austria submitted it for Best Foreign Language Film at the 62nd Academy Awards and it was not nominated. It is the first part of Haneke's glaciation trilogy. Who it is for: viewers who can take formally severe and emotionally cold films. Who it is not for: most people. It shows a family suicide step by step, without explanation and without music.