World at Stake

Directors: Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein
Script: Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein
Cinematography: Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein
Editing: Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein
Music: Adrian Jonas Haim
Producer: Total Refusal

Austria 2025
20’01”

A golfer fails to strike, a soccer team plays against itself and a rally co-driver faces an identity crisis. They are surrounded by an audience unable to act. Shot in sports video games, the film A World At Stake turns the ordering principles of victory and defeat upside down and negotiates social roles between individual sovereignty and collective passivity. In the face of catastrophe, a feeling of political powerlessness remains. Nothing less than the world is at stake.

Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein

The media guerilla Total Refusal is a collective of artists, researchers, and filmmakers who upcycle the resources of mainstream video games to create political narratives in the form of videos, interventions, performances, and lectures. Their work has been screened at over 250 film and art festivals and exhibited at various spaces. The films premiered at Berlinale ’20, Locarno ’22 und ’23. Since their foundation in 2018, Total Refusal have been awarded with more than 50 prizes and honorary mentions, amongst them Locarnos Best Short Direction Award 2022 and Best Shortfilm at the European Film Awards 2023.