Homo Sapiens

Homo Sapiens, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Austria 2016, 94'. 

 A radical example of observation, story and history without the need for characters, VO or texts to contextualise what we are seeing. Only live audio and fixed shots of abandoned buildings. This is a total post-apocalyptic film, shot in our times, in natural settings, a pure documentary that smashes the notion of past, present and future.  

Documentary on abandoned buildings and constructions: this is a collection of fixed shots, each take lasting around twenty seconds, depicting different sites around the world: a Soviet stadium, cinemas, shops, nuclear power stations, hospitals, etc. The effect is quite hypnotic, since the photography is excellent as are the locations. The result is post-apocalyptic, as if these were the sets for a zombie movie, post nuclear disaster or something of the kind (the very title is a play on ideas, given that the film is devoid of any human presence). 

Homo sapiens is a film on the finiteness and fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial era, and what it means to be a human being.

What will be left of our lives after we have gone?

The empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly covered in vegetation, the collapse of asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, stripped of human life. Now abandoned and decaying, it is gradually reclaimed by nature after many years absence.

Homo sapiens is an ode to humanity as seen from a possible future scenario. Its purpose is to tune our gaze to the here-and-now, and our awareness of the present.