Competitionfilms a-z

Wir sind die Mutanten

D, ED: Konrad Wakolbinger, CI: Thomas Marschall
AUT 2013, OwE, 15‘

 

“We’re the mutants”, said the former Austrian post office chairman Anton Wais when asked in an interview what would become of the workers who would lose their jobs when the state-owned enterprise was privatised. Black and white archive footage, accompanied by nostalgic music, shows postal workers sorting letters and parcels at a conveyor belt. Today this process is fully automated, and the number of workers needed has fallen dramatically. The public service employees have been transferred to the post office’s so-called Career and Development Centre, where they lead a miserable life that mainly involves wasting time. We see abandoned workplaces that are now just a vague memory of human presence.

Konrad Wakolbinger was born in Austria in 1969 and initially trained in logistics and information management. Since 2003 he’s been working as production manager and production assistant for television, on short films and in advertising. He lives and works in Vienna.

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