Museum Hours

Directed by: Jem Cohen

2012 | Austria-USA | 107 minutes | Unrated

When a Vienna museum guard befriends an enigmatic visitor, the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum becomes a mysterious crossroads which sparks explorations of their lives, the city, and the ways artworks reflect and shape the world.

“A Canadian woman flies to Vienna. She is there to visit a cousin, who lies in a coma; duty keeps her from leaving, yet she has little to do, so she wanders the wet winter city and the Kunsthistorisches Museum. There she meets a security guard who takes her gently under his wing. Jem Cohen’s movie is barely a story at all: what matters are the Old Masters on the walls of the gallery—notably Bruegel, whose paintings, hung together, form one of the great rooms of the world. The camera inspects them, often in closeup, always at leisure, and no one could begrudge the movie such tranquility. It finds the time to look at looking, and to offer a slow revelation: to the lonely and the stranded, it is art that feels like home.” - Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

Nominated Golden Leopard, Locarno Film Festival, 2012