Sparschwein

When you hear the word piggy bank, you typically think of a small object with a slot where you can insert coins. When you need the money, you have to “break” the pig. The many metaphors contained in this word are taken to the extreme in this film. The director makes himself the (moral) piggy bank. He goes right up to the edge of embezzlement by spending the €90,000 he received from ORF for a documentary on a house in the Waldviertel that his wife Michaela desperately wants. However, he still needs to deliver a film, which logically now has to be a no-budget film. The director intends to film himself as he embarks on a year-long money strike. When the family goes on vacation in Carinthia, he walks there on foot. This is just one example of the many questions raised by his experiment. Right from the start, the film Sparschwein reveals itself as a mockumentary – an experiment with the documentary form while also serving as a satire. However, the satire unexpectedly takes a serious turn; the “free loader” becomes a climate activist, the frivolous money strike transforms into diverse activities ‘for future’, and in this role of acting and agitating against the apocalypse, despair lurks on the horizon as a real possibility.