30/11/2005

On Monday, Our Daily Bread, by Nikolaus Geyrhalter, world-premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) (24 November-4 December). This documentary produced by the author himself is indeed taking part in the Joris Ivens competition as well as the 'Green Screen', as is Erwin Wagenhofer's We Feed the World, an Allegro Film production which deals with a similar subject.

In Our Daily Bread, Geyrhalter depicts these Metropolis-like food factories which Europe depends on and emphasizes the dehumanisation of a vital process by means of a surreal monumental aesthetics. This film perfectly complements Wagenhofer's, since We Feed the World ventures to the other side of the industrial phenomenon and interviews not only the managers of Nestle but also some traditional peasants and fishermen who struggle to survive (read article).

Both films illustrate a current trend in Austria, where a lot of documentaries on serious and universal themes have been produced lately, such as Hubert Sauper's successful Darwin's Nightmare, which was revealed during the Venice Days 2004 (where it won the Europa Cinemas Label, followed by many other awards), and Workingman's Death by Michael Glawogger (read article), a film dealing not with mass production of food but with labour, a film which was presented this year on the Lido. Besides the fact that Austria, where the recently released Paradise Now [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (a fiction in which Hany Abu-Assad depicts two Palestinian terrorists) is currently debated, is obviously interested in what happens outside its borders, its noticeable taste for 'political' documentaries is also related to the perception of a global emergency. As Glawogger says, 'the alienation factor (...) is now greater than ever.'

We Feed the World was released on the 30th of September by Filmladen, but the Austrian public will have to wait until the beginning of 2006 to discover Our Daily Bread.

(Translated from French)