
Zustandswechsel (Changing Lanes)
Styria sits at the conservative heart of Austrian culture, the region of yodeling and Catholic tradition that gave the world The Sound of Music. This film goes looking for the cannabis subculture underneath that surface, and finds one large enough to surprise even locals. Actor Michael Ostrowski and musician Hans Söllner appear alongside police officials, doctors, hemp growers, and everyday users, each giving their read on a plant that is simultaneously farmed legally, prescribed medically, and sold on the black market. Interviews with executive-branch officials lay out the legal contradictions Austria has built around hemp, while medical voices weigh its treatment uses against the risks regulators cite. Growers and dealers describe a market shaped by demand as much as by law, and users talk plainly about why they smoke. The directors, Nick Gruber and Ahmed Abdalla, let these competing accounts sit side by side rather than resolving them, leaving Styria's hemp culture looking less like a hidden fringe and more like an open secret the region has learned to live with.