Imagine you were born in Vienna. You went to school here, you speak the dialect, you pay your taxes, and you teach history—the history of the very democracy that defines this nation. Now imagine, when election day comes, you are politely, but firmly, asked to stay outside. You have no vote. No say. No voice.
This isn’t a dystopian concept; it’s the reality for over 1.4 million people of voting age in Austria. They are excluded from the most fundamental civic act simply because they lack an Austrian passport. This glaring democratic deficit struck me as an invisible, systemic failure, and it became the theoretical core of my current master’s project.
One of my ideas for the short film: designed to visually implement this theme and analyze its emotional impact, focuses on the character Vanessa. She is a 28-year-old high school history teacher in Vienna, born and raised here, the daughter of immigrants who run a small Afroshop. Vanessa embodies perfect integration, yet she is politically marginalized. Her personal struggle to acquire the right to vote, the basic premise of her life being determined by others, is the lens through which this story concept examines this systemic contradiction.
But why is Vanessa’s struggle so difficult? To illuminate this gap, we need to understand the facts and the sheer absurdity of the hurdles involved.
The Systemic Failure: 20% of Austria Is unrepresented
The sheer scale of the exclusion is staggering. Nationwide, roughly 20 percent of the resident population aged 16 and over cannot vote in federal (Nationalrat) elections. This situation is the direct consequence of the ius sanguinis (right of blood) principle governing Austrian citizenship, which stipulates that you inherit citizenship from your parents, not from your birthplace.
In a major metropolitan hub like Vienna, this figure rockets to an astonishing 35 percent. This isn’t an issue affecting only newly arrived migrants. It’s a generational one. For a child born and raised here, whose parents also hold foreign passports (known as third-country nationals), the struggle for a voice is a fight for their very identity.
The result is a societal split: a huge segment of the population is deemed essential for the country’s economic and social function—working in healthcare, logistics, and education—yet they are systematically denied the right to political self-determination. They are the system-relevant but politically irrelevant.
The Roadblock: The absurd Journey to Citizenship
Why don’t these well-integrated people simply get a passport? The path to Austrian citizenship is one of the most difficult and expensive in Europe. For someone born in Austria to non-EU parents, who has met every requirement, the journey is not a reward for integration—it is an exhausting, costly, and precarious bureaucratic marathon.
1. The Financial Barrier: The Price of Belonging
The costs associated with naturalization are prohibitively high, often reaching well over €5,000 when factoring in all necessary steps:
- Application Fees & Knowledge Tests: Significant administrative costs for filing and testing required knowledge of Austrian history and democracy.
- Language Certificates (C1/C2 Level): Expensive courses and exams, even for those who speak perfect, native-level German.
- The Final Act: A substantial fee for the actual “conferral” of citizenship.
For a young professional like our potential protagonist, Vanessa, this means years of saving money—money that could have gone towards an apartment deposit or building a stable future—just to purchase the right to vote. The kicker? If the application is rejected for any reason, the fees are generally non-refundable. The fight for a passport is a high-stakes, uninsurable gamble.
2. The Document Trap: The Unsolvable Riddle
Beyond the financial stress, the most common reason for application failure is the inability to produce required documents, particularly the “release from previous citizenship” (§ 10 Abs. 1 StbG).
Austrian law typically demands that an applicant renounce their previous citizenship. This creates an impossible situation if the applicant’s country of origin (like many conflict zones or unstable states) either:
- a) Refuses to issue release papers, or;
- b) Is unable to issue reliable official documents due to political instability.
The result is a Catch-22: You are deemed fully integrated by Austrian society, you pass every test, you meet the financial criteria, but because a bureaucratic office in a country you may never have visited can’t issue a piece of paper, your entire life in Austria remains legally provisional.
Designing for a Voice: The Master’s Thesis Context
The central theme of this work and the driving force behind my short film concepts is the deep irony that someone like Vanessa, who teaches her students about the importance of democratic participation, is systematically silenced. The thousands of Euros she spends are not for luxury; they are the price tag on a basic human right.
The master’s thesis, “Emotional Resonance through Narrative Deception: Strategies of Viewer Guidance and Character Identification in Fictional Short Film,” leverages this factual injustice to analyze emotional storytelling. The key strategies employed are:
- Narrative Deception: The film intentionally misleads the audience to believe the character’s financial stress is due to a typical housing issue or student debt. This maximizes the emotional impact when the political cause (the passport fees) is revealed.
- Emotional Resonance: The contrast between the character’s native-level competence and legal marginalization generates intense empathy and outrage, turning a statistical issue into a personal tragedy.
- Irony as Guidance: The consistent use of irony (teaching about the right she lacks) serves as a potent tool for viewer guidance, ensuring the narrative climax delivers a powerful, unambiguous message.
The goal of this project is to turn that silent majority into a visually and emotionally potent force, demanding that the system recognize the simple truth: If you call this place home, you deserve a voice in shaping it.
Sources:
Bundesministerium für europäische und internationale Angelegenheiten. (2023). Staatsbürgerschaftsgesetz 1985 (StbG). (Cited for the legal hurdles and the requirement to renounce prior citizenship, § 10 Abs. 1 StbG).
Republik Österreich. Bundes-Verfassungsgesetz (B-VG). (Cited for the necessity of Austrian citizenship to exercise the right to vote in the Nationalrat election).
Statistik Austria. (2024). Bevölkerungsstand und Staatsangehörigkeit. (Cited for the absolute numbers of non-eligible voters in the voting age population (16 and over) and the estimate for Vienna. Data based on the latest available surveys).
