The Blood Countess

Ulrike Ottinger's The Blood Countess (German: Die Blutgräfin) premiered at the Berlinale in 2026 and is the eighty-year-old German director's first narrative feature in over fifteen years, Ottinger's previous feature, Under Snow, came out in 2011. Ottinger has been one of the central figures of West German experimental cinema since the 1970s, with a body of work that includes Madame X - Eine absolute Herrscherin (1978), Freak Orlando (1981) and Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989).

The cast is led by Sandra Hüller, Cécile de France and Verena Altenberger, with cinematography by Wolfgang Weichselbaumer in vivid Eastman colour and lavish costume design by Gisela Storch, both Ottinger collaborators of multiple decades. The screenplay is by Ottinger herself with co-writer Julian Pörksen. The Vienna sequences were shot at the Hofburg, the Schönbrunn Palace and several private libraries, with extensive use of period interiors not normally available to film productions.

The Erzsébet Báthory legend (the Hungarian noblewoman of the late sixteenth century who was tried in 1610 for the murders of her servants) has been the subject of over a dozen narrative films since the 1970s; Ottinger's version is widely treated as the most stylistically distinct, foregrounding the literary and Habsburg-imperial framing rather than the conventional horror register. The film is one of the most-anticipated releases on the European art-house circuit in 2026 and a likely fixture of major retrospectives of Ottinger's work over the next several years.