Isabelle Huppert (Elle, Greta) is the vampiric Elizabeth Báthory on the poster for The Blood Countess.
A sumptuous adventure and bizarro black comedy soaked in crimson and pulsing with ancient bloodlust, the film will world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival next week.
Decades after her mysterious disappearance, the Blood Countess reemerges in modern-day Vienna, where she reunites with her devoted underling, Hermione, to track down a dangerous book with the power to destroy all evil — including all vampires such as themselves.
The duo embarks on a scavenger hunt through the city’s magnificent historic sites and conscript the countess’s melancholic nephew — a vegetarian vampire — and his psychotherapist as they expand their search to Bohemia. Meanwhile, a pair of vampirologists and a police inspector remain hot on their trail.
Morbidly funny and dazzlingly decadent, the reinvention of the vampire myth is directed by Ulrike Ottinger from a script she co-wrote with Elfriede Jelinek (The Piano Teacher).
Birgit Minichmayr (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer), Thomas Schubert (The Dark Valley), Lars Eidinger (Personal Shopper), and André Jung (The Experiment) co-star.
Marco Lorenzini, Karl Markovics (Unknown), Marco Lorenzini, Felix Oitzinger, Burghart Klaußner (Good Bye Lenin), and Eurovision Song Contest winner Conchita Wurst round out the cast.
Bettina Brokemper (Melancholia, Antichrist), Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu, and Bady Minck produce the Austria-Luxembourg-Germany co-production.
