Senta Wengraf # 2024

Senta Wengraf was born on May 10, 1924, in Vienna. She would have celebrated her 100th birthday in May of this year. She starred alongside Romy Schneider and O. W. Fischer in films and became the nation's daughter-in-law in television series such as “Familie Leitner” and “Die liebe Familie.” On stage, she enjoyed playing the role of the cultured, educated salon lady. In real life, too, the actress, who was married to Count Christoph Herberstein in her younger years, was an integral part of Viennese society.

For decades, she was the “muse” of Marcel Prawy. After his death in February 2003, as his heir, she handed over his archive, collected in his legendary plastic bags, to the Vienna City and Regional Library. The documentary not only sheds light on what made the artist and actress Senta Wengraf so special, but also on the fact, which she never denied, that she was the last lover of the Sun King (as Bruno Kreisky was often called by the press) during those twenty years from 1970 until his death in 1990.

Wengraf made her film debut in 1946 in the movie “Glaube an mich” (Believe in Me), directed by Geza von Cziffra, the first Austrian feature film after World War II. She subsequently appeared in numerous films with partners such as Marika Rökk, Josef Meinrad, and in the “Sissi” films alongside Romy Schneider. She played her last role in 1998 at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Ödön von Horváth's “Faith, Love, Hope.”

Among other things, the documentary explores the questions that defined her life beyond her artistic work: Did Senta Wengraf also have political influence through Bruno Kreisky? What might that have looked like? What defined her as an actress and artist, and what defined her as a private woman? The result is a historically interesting and very contemporary portrait. Among those commenting on this are her estate administrator Robert Castellitz, journalist and Kreisky biographer Herbert Lackner, fellow actresses Dolores Schmidinger and Marianne Nentwich, Alfons Haider, film historian Günter Krenn, and others.