VIENNALE – Vienna International Film Festival — 2025

Lois Weinberger. Ruderal Society
a film by Markus Heltschl

Premiere: October 18th, 2025, 4:30 p.m. Metro, Historischer Saal, in the presence of Markus Heltschl.
October 28th, 2025, 2:45 p.m. Metro, Kinosalon.

Between hay bales and old agricultural vehicles, a woman and a man haul a tinplate horse out of a barn. The horse’s forelegs are upright, while its hind legs are flexed, as if about to move—an in-between object. Once freed from dust and dirt, the horse is placed inside a museum, thus morphing into art. Director Markus Heltschl deliberately places the tin horse’s journey at the beginning of this portrait of an artist whose entire oeuvre was shaped by nature. Known as the man with the watering can, Lois Weinberger, who died in 2020, looked after, collected and studied plants in wastelands. With his poetics of weeds and philosophy of deserted soil, Weinberger questioned the relationship between civilisation and nature, and is a vanguard figure in today’s ecologically charged art scene. Heltschl’s film is structured according to randomly sequenced chapters (23 is followed by 47, 94 by 29, etc.). It features interviews with gallery owners, curators and museum directors. It also highlights drawings, poems, installations—all with the intention of forming an extensive portrait of what Lois Weinberger understood as “ruderal”: plants that humans prefer not to see, suppressed soil, forgotten earth. (Anna Katharina Laggner)