71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (German: 71 Fragmente einer Chronologie des Zufalls) is a 1994 Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed by Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke

Michael Haneke is a German born Austrian filmmaker and writer best known for his bleak and disturbing style. His films often document problems and failures in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work...

. It has a fragmented storyline as the title suggests, and chronicles several unrelated stories in parallel. Separate narrative

Narrative

A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...

 lines intersect in an incident at the last of the film: a mass killing at an Austrian bank. The film is set in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, October to December 1993.

The film opens with intertitles which introduces the mass killing in detail. So it chronicles in flashbacks a last few months of Vienna.

The drama consists of varied characters in each storyline: a Romanian

Romanians

The Romanians are an ethnic group native to Romania, who speak Romanian; they are the majority inhabitants of Romania....

 boy who immigrated illegally into Austria and lives in streets

Homelessness

Homelessness describes the condition of people without a regular dwelling. People who are homeless are unable or unwilling to acquire and maintain regular, safe, and adequate housing, or lack "fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence." The legal definition of "homeless" varies from country...

 of Vienna; a religious bank security worker; an old man staring at TV screen; a childless couple considering adoption

Adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...

; a frustrated student and so on.

The film is divided into a number of variable-length "fragments" divided by black pauses, and apparently unrelated to each other. The film is characterised by quite a lot of fragments that take form of video newscasts unrelated to the main storylines. News footages of real events are shown through video monitors. Newscasts report on Bosnian War

Bosnian War

The Bosnian War or the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995. The war involved several sides...

, Somali Civil War

Somali Civil War

The Somali Civil War is an ongoing civil war taking place in Somalia. The conflict, which began in 1991, has caused destabilisation throughout the country, with the current phase of the conflict seeing the Somali government losing substantial control of the state to rebel forces...

, South Lebanon conflict, terrorist's bombing in Turkey, and molestation allegations

1993 child sexual abuse accusations against Michael Jackson

In 1993, Evan Chandler accused Michael Jackson of sexually abusing his thirteen-year-old son, Jordan. The relationship between Jackson and Jordan began in May 1992. Evan initially welcomed and encouraged the friendship, and bragged about his connection to a celebrity. The friendship became well...

 against Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson

Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...

.

The director Michael Haneke refers to 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance as the last part of
his "glaciation trilogy", whose other parts are his preceding two films.

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