(Half) The Time Of My Life

ABOUT THE FILM

Today, if you haven’t made it by 30 it’s all over.

Filmmaker Marko Doringer has decided to go on a very personal mission: he is 30 years old, hasn’t achieved anything in life, and has just lost his first molar. Bodily decay has begun, youth is disappearing fast. What else is there in life before it’s all over?

Marko will visit old friends, his parents, and their friends to find out whether they are better off than him. Why does being 30 have to be this hard? Marko questions the meaning of life with perceptive irony. He relentlessly confronts his protagonists with both the large and small questions of humanity: why is it so difficult accepting the success of others? Why it is so difficult to accept one’s own?

(Half) The Time Of My Life is an ironic self-portrait of a whole generation – the happily depressed; a real life version of a coming-of-age novel of our present, and Marko’s future.

Awarded “Best Austrian Documentary”

• Read the jury’s decision

  Great Diagonale Film Prize ‘08 | Jury statement:

  An interim filmic statement on midlife. The filmmaker believes himself to be in a state of crisis and goes on a journey to search for the reasons. He speaks to old school friends and relatives, letting them talk and talking about himself as well. So far it sounds like the usual lamentation on the meaning of life. But from this constellation Marko Doringer has created a clever and funny tour d’horizon on growing up, mobility and persistence, utopias and being “realistic”.

  The confidentiality and openness inherent as a matter of course in the dialogues he conducts derives from Marko Doringer’s own filmic method: he works with the smallest possible team, wielding the camera himself, pointedly stimulating the dialogue to create an intense communicative space, into which the audience is drawn without ever feeling uncomfortable. In an almost casual way, the film not only tells the story of his generation but also addresses issues significant for our society today: the dissolution of family bonds and material security, the shifts in value systems, and the unreasonable demands on modern and flexible women and men. An intimately personal film for everyone.

  Christine A. Maier (Director of Photography, AT)
  Werner Ruzicka (Head of Duisburger Filmwoche, DE)
  Elisabeth Scharang (filmmaker, AT)
  Diagonale, April 03, 2008