Maria Petschnig 2025 118 min Austria/ USA
Karaman Cinema September 14, 2025 21:15
In order to be able to afford a small 2BR Brooklyn apartment, a fiercely artistic woman decides to cohabitate with one seemingly harmless but secretly crazy roommate after the next and finds herself in some bizarre boundary-pushing experiences, forcing her to question her own norms and the human psyche.
Maria Petschnig is an Austrian born NYC based filmmaker. “Beautiful and Neat Room” is inspired by her own experiences of cohabitating with other people, having shared her living space with more than 60 roommates over the course of 22 years. She has told The New York Times that sharing her apartment was “a way to survive as an artist in New York City”. Petschnig has made twenty-plus experimental films and a feature documentary, Uncomfortably Uncomfortable, which earned acclaim at the 2021 Duisburger Film Woche, where it won the ARTE documentary award. “Her strange films suggest she’s the art world’s Franz Kafka.” – New York magazine