The Best of All Worlds (2017) User Reviews

What an incredibly moving story

[SkellyCT · 10/10 · 15 February 2017]

I have seen the premiere at the Berlinale 2017.

Within the first 5 minutes we are transported into a world most of us don't know much of. We watch from a young child's point of view what his world looks like, it is his best world of all, the only one he knows and it's good. In truth of course it is not.

An incredibly touching story told with a huge amount of empathy by simply telling it as it is. Adrian Goiginger is showing off a great talent in his first feature length film. Very gently does he show us this love story between a mother and a child. A very strong mother who despite all her shortcomings and her inner turmoil manages to give this child a wonderful childhood.

Jeremy Miliker is quite a find, his energy and emotional depth is astounding at his tender age. Verena Altenberger shows incredible courage by going deep into this difficult character. They and all other cast clearly have worked hard with their director to get to the bottom of the story and their characters.

A special mention and thumbs up for Michael Pink whose song "Fia di" continues to ring in my ears.

Without giving away anything I want to encourage you to go watch it once it's in movie theaters even if you feel it might be too touching, and it is, because the end will make it all worth it.

Not Your Sound of Music Salzburg

[anderson471780 · 10/10 · 17 May 2018]

I saw this film at the 2018 Nashville Film Festival. This was an incredible true story of the love between a mother and her son as she struggles with the pain of drug addiction. I have been to Salzburg a couple of times, it was strange to see this city from the inside of the drug culture rather than the perspective of a tourist. This is not the Sound of Music Salzburg. Warning this movie is not for the faint of heart, soul-crushing drug addiction is on full display.

You will cringe at the situations this mother puts her 7 year old son in, but through it all the enduring love of a mother and son carry this film with great effect.

Bleak Austrian family drama with focus on substance abuse

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 18 September 2019]

"Die beste aller Welten" or "The Best of All Worlds" is an Austrian/German co-production from 2017, so still relatively new this one, but not brand new, that runs for approximately 100 minutes and was the second full feature film by writer and director Adrian Goiginger. It is certainly more Austrian than German if you take a look at the cast, the accents, where the film is set etc. and for Goiginger it is his big breakthrough film as he won major awards for it here, including Best Film and Best Director prizes at the Austrian Film Awards. The somewhat extraordinary thing is that he was still in his mid-20s when he made this and he is still not even really close to 30 now, so a pretty young filmmaking prospect and he could have a bright career ahead, maybe also on an international level. A handful of Austrian filmmakers have found their way to Hollywood in the last decade or so, probably not even fewer than here from Germany. Anyway, lets go more into detail about this one. If you take a look at the awards recognition, you will see immediately that it was extremely successful and appreciated and also the now 7.8-rating here on imdb by 600 users speaks for itself. And overall I would agree with everybody who liked this film. I think it certainly had its moments and felt authentic overall. Actually, this is the film's biggest strength: the bleak realism. I honestly felt as if I was watching a documentary at times, which definitely says a lot good about the performances, but also about the way the film was written. Sure, it is these moments like one guy towards the end dying in the female protagonist's home that will make clear again this is fiction, but it is okay, a little dramatization never hurt anybody. Nonetheless, I was not too blown away like most others were, maybe because I'm really into Austrian film these days and I would not say it is among the country's best from recent years. I felt that here and there the film had a bit of a length honestly, but it is okay, nothing deal-breaking and there is no doubt despite these, that the film's strengths were still far more frequent than the film's weaknesses. Alternberger holds the filmy nicely together with her haunting lead performance as a women stuck between being a good mother to her son and her various addictions. I can see why she received a nice share of awards recognition for what she did here and it is probably not undeserving. The supporting players, who also received some awards recognition, did not impress me that much overall. Basically all of them are males, the men in Helga's (Altenberger's) life. This is the one Austrian well-received film from recent years that does not have Georg Friedrich in it, at least that's how it felt to me. A bit of a pity I guess because I liked him a lot. Jeremy Miliker also gives a solid, but not overwhelming, child performance here. You can see immediately that he is despite his age absolutely no rookie. In some scenes he really showed his talent, especially those when he is confronted with his mother's lifestyle himself, namely when we have a man who tries to force him into drinking high-percentage alcohol. Way to ruin a kid's future, that was a shocking scene, especially with the way he resists, maybe the most memorable from the entire movie, certainly the most memorable with Altenberger, although she shows up at the end. Now the description here makes it obvious already what take on the story and relationship Goiginger wants us to take. Mother and child are those we were supposed to cheer for that much is safe. And we clearly should hope that they find a way to get together and are not separated by child custody. Or would that actually be the better way? I mean there is somebody dying in the little family's living room as I said earlier already. It's up to you to decide which path to take. There's not just black-and-white in here, but all the characters who have more than a minute screentime have good and interesting shades. Well done really to Goiginger, a script that feels from a much older and more experienced filmmaker. So with Austrian films, you never really know how they are ending, which is also pretty nice, so you can certainly be curious which turns the story would be taking in the end. Shame I cannot say the same about German movies. Aside from historic movies and maybe crime movies, they really struggle a lot when it comes to depicting (family) drama. Sure there are exceptions like recent films with Bjarne Mädel, but I don't even want to think of how this would have turned out as a German films. probably they'd have included the required politically correct subpplot about immigration and also we indeed could have gotten a forced unrealistic super-happy ending with unbearable "emotional" music running loudly in the background. Thank you for not being like that Austria. Thanks for taking the right route with films like this one. I give it a thumbs-up. Worth watching.

La mejor película de este año

[samyleana · 10/10 · 14 June 2018]

Simplemente la mejor película que he visto este año.

A small masterpiece

[alexlaggerv · 10/10 · 28 March 2020]

I highly recommend this wonderful piece of art. It is very enhancing to watch such a well made Austrian film. It deals with drug abuse in an intellectual profound way from the perspective of an innocent child. Be open-minded and enjoy it!

Best First Movie

[lukas-stader · 10/10 · 3 November 2021]

The Picture is amazing. An amazing Work of Adrian Goiginger for his first big Movie.

Such an amazing storytelling and acting.

Attention it's not a feelgood movie it's definitely a soulcrushing Movie.