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.”
