Borderline Cases

Filmmaker Kurt Langbein and author Robert Menasse travel Austria's borders together and document how they have shaped - and continue to shape - people's lives. Borders are political reality - and at the same time a multi-layered metaphor. Going to the border is an adventure, crossing borders a challenge, sometimes literally a necessary one. Opening borders make people euphoric, but open borders also make people afraid. Borderless Europe is an old dream, and for many a new nightmare. The film accompanies the writer Robert Menasse to the borders of Austria and the EU. He meets border crossers, border guards, border dwellers, people who profited from the borders, who heroically overcame them or failed at them. On the journey along the borders it turns out: when borders open, they are far from disappearing, when they disappear, they have only shifted. Culture and mentality are the result of the drawing of borders and not the other way around. And in order to approach the border in a human way and even to overcome it - this requires special people.