Writer
Religious faith as the everyday experience of ordinary people is rarely treated seriously, or even depicted, in cinema. Often it is either magnified into extravagant lyricism, or mercilessly derided. Zwischen uns Gott takes a very different, more honest and intimate documentary approach. Director Rebecca Hirneise feels estranged from the beliefs of her Protestant upbringing, and so returns to the culture of her family in order to understand it better and come to terms with it. She initiates a literal circle in which theological discussions take place between her mother, aunts and uncles.
Director of Photography
La empresa is a strange creature of a most ambiguous nature: a fiction film about documentary filmmaking as fiction filmmaking, and what it all does to a region’s economy as well as a collective psychology. Or is it? Isn’t it more to the point to say that... But before we get lost here, let’s state what La empresa talks about: how the caminata nocturna, the illegal crossing of the border between Mexico and the United States, was turned into a business that ranges from four-hour night-time tours for tourists out for a sick thrill to reenactments for film and television crews. The latter, of course, is at the core of André Siegers’ casually ironic look at this economy of disaster. When the Germans arrive in town, they meet a workforce already in place and willing to play to any national stereotype – as the French seem to get other kicks out of presenting the caminata nocturna than the Netflix internationals.
Editor
Comprised entirely of archive material, drawing on a rich seam of documents to reveal how Swiss filmmaker and travel writer René Gardi left his mark on how a whole generation viewed Africa from the 1950s onwards. The film doesn’t just highlight Gardi’s colonialist way of thinking, but also functions as a reflection on the projections of Africa of today.
