Dir: Nikolaus Geyrhalter | Austria Doc 78’
Lights blinking like a ghostly tardis from outer space a snowplow moves silently through a mysterious white landscape. A man stands outside his house dwarfed by massive drifts of snow. We are in Niigata, Japan where in wintertime the temperature often goes down to minus 30 and buildings and entire villages are regularly engulfed in metres of snow.
In summer the rising temperatures have made it too hot to make miso paste, an activity that is now more precarious due to the recent changes in climate that have reverberated through the planet for thousands of years. And this is just one example.
In his latest eco-documentary filmed between 2021-25 Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter sets out to record “the archives of the future” travelling from the Swiss Alps to Japan, Canada, Iceland, and Antarctica and recording interviews with the people that live there and the impact on their lives
Geyrhalter’s calm observational style makes use of wide and peaceful shots that resonate allowing the landscapes and the people to speak for themselves avoiding any judgement.
MELT screens at DOK Leipzig, IDFA Amsterdam, and the Viennale.