The Blood Countess

Showing: Sun, Oct 11th, 4:00 PM @ Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Wyatt Auditorium

Join us for a Q&A with actress Birgit Minichmayr after the screening!

This screening of The Blood Countess is part of the 2026 Houston Cinema Arts Festival. Tickets must be purchased through the festival website. Goethe-Institut guests can get $5 off tickets using the discount code “Goethe_partner”.

About the Film

From the legendary filmmaker and visual artist Ulrike Ottinger comes THE BLOOD COUNTESS, a sumptuous adventure tale and bizarro black comedy soaked in crimson and pulsing with ancient bloodlust. Decades after her mysterious disappearance, the Blood Countess reemerges in modern-day Vienna, where she reunites with her devoted maid, Hermine, to track down a dangerous book with the power to destroy all evil— including all vampires such as themselves. The duo embark on a scavenger hunt through the city’s magnificent historic sites, and conscript the countess’s melancholic nephew—a vegetarian vampire named Bubi—and his psychotherapist as they expand their search to Bohemia. Meanwhile, a pair of vampirologists and a police inspector remain hot on their trail. Morbidly funny and dazzlingly decadent, THE BLOOD COUNTESS is a reinvention of the vampire myth from one of world cinema’s most prodigious minds.

THE BLOOD COUNTESS
Year: 2026
Runtime: 119 minutes
Language: German, French with English subtitles
Country: Germany
Director: Ulrike Ottinger
Screenwriter: Elfriede Jelinek, Ulrike Ottinger
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Birgit Minichmayr, Thomas Schubert