The first stop on our country tour through Europe takes us to Austria: the land of mountains, hospitality and, of course, Wiener Schnitzel. Join us in the Alpine republic and discover how the REWE Group family lives diversity, innovation and co-operative cohesion in the region.

Outside of documentaries, nature in all its beauty and relentlessness rarely seems to play a role in cinema. The exception to this rule are two female directors whose emotional and effortlessly instructive films are helping to get the 2026 cinema year off to an extraordinary start. Firstly, there is Ildikó Enyedi, who makes an ancient ginkgo tree the centre of attention in "Silent Friend". Secondly, Chloé Zhao has taken a closer look at the life of the Shakespeare family in "Hamnet". In "The Deepest Blue", 77-year-old Tereza dives into the Brazilian Amazon region.

Three special stories shine in the run-up to Christmas: Charly Hübner becomes a satirical escape helper in "Der Held vom Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse", Eva Victor deals with an assault with black humour in "Sorry, Baby". Sky/Wow is honouring Mozart with the opulent series "Amadeus".

There is a cinema, away from the mainstream, in which situations are more important than stories, images more significant than words and nuances more profound than dialogue. Two films this autumn prove how well this works as satire. In "Bugonia", Yorgos Lanthimos places the fate of humanity in the hands of a conspiracy theorist. Ari Aster centres the often absurd drama of the Covid pandemic on the small town of Eddington in New Mexico. The new eight-part miniseries "The Beast in Me" with Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys on Netflix is far more darkly mysterious.