Out of Time

It's early morning in Vienna. All over the city, metal shutters are being rolled up over the windows of small businesses. But for a number of long-standing shop owners, it's getting increasingly difficult to make ends meet. The leather repair shop, the old-fashioned apothecary, the corner butcher, the purveyor of fine buttons; the most recent of them was established in 1928. In OUT OF TIME, all these business owners reflect on what their livelihoods mean to them. Faced with a new society of consumers unwilling to pay a premium for personalized service and painstaking workmanship, the shopkeepers are seeing their customer base dwindle. Director Harald Friedl allows these simple yet dignified small-business owners to speak for themselves. We follow the threads of their personal histories: there is the good-natured apothecary who has persisted through wartime tragedy; the butcher couple, with mixed feelings about closing, but anticipating plenty of time for gardening; the button queen, bitter over a life misspent; and the leather worker and his wife, who demonstrates incredible dedication to the life's work of her husband. A quiet documentary that makes you care where the shopkeepers will go after their shutters roll down for the last time. (In German with English subtitles) – BB