Bürglkopf

After graduating from the Graphische in Vienna with a degree in Multimedia, Lisa Polster worked in social services for several years. Since 2020, she has been studying Screenwriting/Dramaturgy at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. Bürglkopf is her first cinema feature, awarded at Diagonale in 2025.

A word from the selection committee :
In its own way, Bürglkopf is a political intervention film, one that modestly confronts state racism. Bürglkopf is the name of a mountain in Tyrol, Austria, where a return counselling centre for asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected sits perched – isolated, remote and hidden from view. Officially, it is an administrative institution designed to serve people. This geographical reality permeates the entire film: it seeks to grasp a spatial situation that defines the relationship between the foreigner and the inhabitant. Bucolic landscapes enclose lives of exile – thwarted in their momentum, prevented from forming new bonds, subjected to forms of labour exploitation – while the snowy slopes welcome tourists and skiers. From the outset, the formal ban on filming inside the centre becomes another act of refusal, which ultimately serves the film’s thesis. Thwarted in her own way, Lisa Polster films as directly as possible in order to capture how torture is inflicted indirectly. The result is a chilling film, a “white nightmare”, whose deceptive calm and swelling off-screen world heighten the denial and hypocrisy at work. 

Florence Maillard