A Companion to Michael Haneke

“This makes the arrival of A Companion to Michael Haneke all the more welcome—for supporters like me, who will find ample evidence of Haneke’s intelligence and enterprise, and for open-minded skeptics willing to risk a change of heart by perusing the largest body of critical, theoretical, and historical work on Haneke so far assembled in one volume. The book’s thirty-two essays have been judiciously chosen and edited by Roy Grundmann, a firstrate scholar of against-the-grain cinema...This gives some idea of the breadth, creativity, and intelligence that distinguish this fine collection of essays on a filmmaker I still stand by as one of the most artfully audacious of our day.”  (Film Quarterly, 1 April 2012)

"A Companion to Michael Haneke   represents a major contribution to Haneke studies. It includes essays by leading film scholars on the German and French language films, and essays on Haneke’s newly available Television work of the seventies and eighties. Grundmann’s introductory survey (Haneke’s Anachronism”) will prove definitive in the field." Kirsten Thompson, Wayne State University

 "Forcefully tackling Haneke’s moral and philosophical games, stylistic rigor, and critical success, the first-rate scholars of this volume shed definitive light on the art film and television works of Europe’s most fashionably retró director. This is post-auteurism at its best." Giorgio Bertellini, University of Michigan

"This collection’s range of essays offers a comprehensive account of Haneke’s work in film and television, as well as a number of strikingly original critical interventions. Its coverage of Haneke’s television feature films is particularly thorough and will initiate many Anglo-American readers into this body of work. Haneke is surely one of the most important contemporary artists working in any medium. This book is both a testimony to and a testing of his achievement." John David Rhodes, editor of On Michael Haneke (Wayne State University Press, 2010) and author of Stupendous, Miserable City: Pasolini's Rome (University of Minnesota Press, 2007)

"Vacant since the deaths of Fassbinder, Truffaut, Tarkovsky and Bergman, the throne of European cinema is now claimed by Michael Haneke. A seasoned festival favourite, this master of transnational filmmaking would not stop astounding audiences with his thought-provoking close-ups of families, nations, and hushed histories.  Roy Grundmann masterfully orchestrates this truly diverse assembly of insightful and up-to-date scholarship on Haneke. The volume not only brings together more than thirty scholars based in the US, Canada, France, Germany, Austria and elsewhere, but also unites generations, from senior scholars to PhD students, for a uniquely interdisciplinary project." Dina Iordanova, Publisher, The Film Festival Yearbook, www.DinaView.com, University of St. Andrews