Strange Neighbors, an art-house nature documentary with no narration, no interviews and no human protagonists will open this year’s Oldenburg Internationales Film Festival, the first time a doc has launched the German indie fest.
The directorial debut of cinematographer Mi Steinbach, Strange Neighbors was shot over three years on Schwarztonnensand, an island and nature preserve on the German Elbe river, smack in the middle of one of Europe’s busiest waterways.
The island, just over 2 miles long, was created in the late 1960s from sand dredged during the deepening of the Elbe shipping channel that serves the port of Hamburg, then left to itself and gradually planted over. It lies directly on the fairway line, closer to the shipping lane than any other land on the river, so container vessels pass within meters of it.
It is a protected area. Humans are banned on the island, and Steinbach has banned them from her film. Strange Neighbors has no commentary track and no dialogue, though it features a soundtrack and sound design from Robert Nacken.
“It was never my idea to make a natural history film,” Steinbach tells THR. “I wanted to make a film that doesn’t just tell you something about animal behavior or about the animals, but that tells you something about this place and above all about us, about human beings.”
Among the habitats Steinbach filmed are tidal floodplain forests, a landscape type that has largely disappeared in Europe. White-tailed eagles, geese and roe deer live wild on the island, along with ground-nesting bird species and predators, including foxes and raccoon dogs. Across the narrow water, the surrounding region, which includes factories from chemical giant Dow and aerospace conglomerate Airbus, is one of the most industrialized regions of Europe. The area is also home to large-scale industrial agriculture, with the resulting effluents triggering oxygen depletion and massive fish death annually.
Steinbach shot the documentary herself over three years and multiple visits to the island. She often stayed for several weeks, living in a wooden hut built on stilts to protect it from the tides.
Strange Neighbors was produced by Earth Cut Filmproduktion and funded by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW. It comes to Oldenburg without a sales agent or theatrical distributor. Steinbach is hoping the world premiere will spark interest from buyers, in Germany and abroad. “This film was made for cinemas,” she says.
Steinbach will attend the Oldenburg festival, which runs Sept. 16-20.
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