Unusual Neighbors, an art-house nature documentary with no narration, no interviews and no human protagonists will open this 12 months’s Oldenburg Internationales Movie Competition, the primary time a doc has launched the German indie fest.
The directorial debut of cinematographer Mi Steinbach, Unusual Neighbors was shot over three years on Schwarztonnensand, an island and nature protect on the German Elbe river, smack in the course of one among Europe’s busiest waterways.
The island, simply over 2 miles lengthy, was created within the late Sixties from sand dredged in the course of the deepening of the Elbe transport channel that serves the port of Hamburg, then left to itself and step by step planted over. It lies instantly on the golf green line, nearer to the transport lane than every other land on the river, so container vessels go inside meters of it.
It’s a protected space. People are banned on the island, and Steinbach has banned them from her movie. Unusual Neighbors has no commentary monitor and no dialogue, although it contains a soundtrack and sound design from Robert Nacken.
“It was by no means my thought to make a pure historical past movie,” Steinbach tells THR. “I wished to make a movie that doesn’t simply inform you one thing about animal habits or concerning the animals, however that tells you one thing about this place and above all about us, about human beings.”
Among the many habitats Steinbach filmed are tidal floodplain forests, a panorama kind that has largely disappeared in Europe. White-tailed eagles, geese and roe deer stay wild on the island, together with ground-nesting fowl species and predators, together with foxes and raccoon canine. Throughout the slender water, the encompassing area, which incorporates factories from chemical big Dow and aerospace conglomerate Airbus, is without doubt one of the most industrialized areas of Europe. The world can be dwelling to large-scale industrial agriculture, with the ensuing effluents triggering oxygen depletion and big fish dying yearly.
Steinbach shot the documentary herself over three years and a number of visits to the island. She usually stayed for a number of weeks, dwelling in a wood hut constructed on stilts to guard it from the tides.
Unusual Neighbors was produced by Earth Reduce Filmproduktion and funded by Movie- und Medienstiftung NRW. It involves Oldenburg with out a gross sales agent or theatrical distributor. Steinbach is hoping the world premiere will spark curiosity from consumers, in Germany and overseas. “This movie was made for cinemas,” she says.
Steinbach will attend the Oldenburg competition, which runs Sept. 16-20.
