General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Indien

Indien (marketed as Indien – Der Film; English title India) is a 1993 Austrian tragicomedy directed by Paul Harather, in which two mismatched hospitality inspectors travel through the Austrian provinces and, despite initial hostility, form a friendship tested by one man's impending death from cancer. The 90-minute film is based on the cabaret theater program of the same name by Josef Hader and Alfred Dorfer, who also star and co-wrote the screenplay with Harather.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director / screenplay	Paul Harather; screenplay by Paul Harather, Josef Hader, and Alfred Dorfer¹
Source	The duo's own cabaret theater program "Indien"²
Leads	Josef Hader as Heinzi Bösel; Alfred Dorfer as Kurt Fellner³
Austrian release	7 October 1993; 224,748 admissions; produced by Dor Film⁴
German release	26 January 1995; FSK 6⁵
Awards	Max-Ophüls-Preis and Österreichischer Filmpreis 1994⁶
Oscar submission	Austria's entry for Best Foreign Language Film; it did not make the shortlist²

Spoilers

Plot and characters

The civil servant Heinzi Bösel, a petty-bourgeois lout in a Pepita hat, is assigned a new colleague: the talkative, yuppie-like striver Kurt Fellner. In Bösel's battered Ford Taunus, the two apparently incompatible characters travel through the Austrian province inspecting taverns and hotel businesses.⁷ Bösel is described in Austrian television listings as a drinking brute who likes taking bribes, while the pedantic Fellner talks incessantly and shows off his Trivial Pursuit knowledge.⁸

Out of the initial hostility grows a friendship that, in the words of the ORF program description, "holds up even in the intensive care unit" at the end.⁹ When Fellner learns he will soon die of cancer, the film shifts from comedy toward a serious, melancholic register; in the derStandard account he dies of testicular cancer in the arms of his friend, facing questions of karma and rebirth with the line "Warum bin ich ein Mensch geworden, und der andere nur ein Hendl?" ("Why did I become a human, and the other just a chicken?").¹⁰ The Filmdienst review notes that the increasingly vicious, below-the-belt verbal duels between Fellner and Bösel unexpectedly become the basis for closeness, even tenderness, between the two very different characters.¹

Origin and production

Hader and Dorfer created the material as a two-person theater piece in 1991; the film, like the play, largely dispenses with supporting characters.¹⁰^•⁹ It was shot in spring 1993 on 35 mm in Vienna and Lower Austria, produced by DOR FILM with producers Danny Krausz and Kurt Stocker, with television participation by ORF, and distributed by FILMLADEN Filmverleih GmbH.⁴ Hans Selikovsky, who had also shot Harather's earlier success Müllers Büro, was the cinematographer, and Ulrich Sinn wrote the music.⁹^•⁴

The supporting cast includes Maria Hofstätter as the Kirchner landlady, in her first big-screen appearance, and Karl Markovics, then filming the first episodes of Inspector Rex, alongside Roger Murbach, Ursula Rojek, Linde Prelog, Karl Künstler, Wolfgang Böck, Proschat Madani, Rupert Henning, Christian Weinberger, and Ranjeet Singh.²

Reception and legacy

The film was the domestic cinema sensation of 1993 in Austria: by the end of the year more than 220,000 people had seen it, and the Austrian Film Institute records 224,748 admissions, figures that made it one of the most successful Austrian films of its era, though Roland Düringer's Hinterholz 8 (1998) later drew over 600,000.⁹^•⁸^•⁴ It received the Max-Ophüls-Preis and the Austrian Film Prize in 1994, and Austria submitted it for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, though it did not reach the shortlist.⁶^•² Der Spiegel wrote at the premiere of a duo "as Thomas Bernhard and Helmut Qualtinger might perhaps have invented in a night of drinking together; a miracle-work of comic terror."

Its dialogue has proved durable: three decades on, reviewers note that lines such as "Danke, ganz lieb" ("Thanks, very sweet") entered general German usage.⁸ Cinema Austriaco ranks it among the great Austrian cult films, crediting it with successfully combining Austria's widespread art of cabaret with cinema itself.²

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 1990 to 1994 › Titles symbols to J

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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