It would be an obvious question to ask in which locations Nikolaus Geyrhalter has taken the pictures for his post-apocalyptic study «Homo sapiens», a series of images he has shot over the course of four years. But this question is not important, even though these disaster-ravaged landscapes – like Fukushima and Chernobyl – suggest that the documentary filmmaker, who was born in Vienna in 1972, considers humanity’s chances of survival to be rather low. Abandoned settlements, ruins, rubble, obsolete equipment, absurd accumulations of objects – they all slowly surrender to rampant nature, which is relentlessly conquering back its habitat. In halls with an open sky, helicopter birds thrust their wings; the wind is howling, the discarded things lying around answer with a rattling noise.
If you want to, you can see a horror film or listen to a story about the hidden, the real life of things. Peter Kutin is responsible for the sound design, which from time to time takes over narrative functions. Michael Palm is responsible for the thrillingly rhythmical editing. Geyrhalter himself takes care of the concept, the direction and the camera work. Homo sapiens is one more example of a cinema shaped by lyrical power and critical analysis that Geyrhalter masters like no other.
