Oldenburg Internationales Film Festival is turning its opening night over to a very unusual set of stars: white-tailed eagles, geese, roe deer, foxes and raccoon dogs.
Mi Steinbach’s “Strange Neighbors” will open this year’s German indie festival, marking the first time a documentary has received the honor, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film is Steinbach’s directorial debut and contains no narration, interviews or human protagonists. Instead, its story unfolds through images, sound design and the behavior of animals living on Schwarztonnensand, a protected nature preserve in the German Elbe River.
The setting gives the film an especially intriguing tension. The island stretches just over two miles and sits directly in the shipping channel leading to Hamburg, with container vessels passing within meters of the land. It was formed in the late 1960s from sand dredged during work to deepen the Elbe, then left to develop into a natural habitat.
That pocket of wildlife exists alongside one of Europe’s busiest industrial waterways. Across the river are facilities associated with Dow and Airbus, as well as extensive industrial agriculture. The surrounding region also faces annual oxygen depletion and major fish deaths linked to agricultural effluents, adding an environmental shadow to the film’s quiet observation.
Steinbach filmed over three years and multiple visits, sometimes staying for weeks in a stilted wooden hut built to withstand the tides. Robert Nacken created the soundtrack and sound design. In comments reported by THR, Steinbach said her goal was not to make a conventional natural-history film, but to use the place to reflect on human beings.
Produced by Earth Cut Filmproduktion with funding from Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, “Strange Neighbors” arrives in Oldenburg without a sales agent or theatrical distributor. Steinbach hopes the premiere will attract buyers, particularly because she believes the film belongs in cinemas.
The director is scheduled to attend the festival, which runs from Sept. 16 through 20.
Source: hollywoodreporter.com
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