Homo Sapiens

Homo Sapiens

A film about the finiteness and fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being. What will remain of our lives after we’re gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, though humanity has disappeared. Now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature after being taken from it so long ago. An ode to humanity as seen from a possible future scenario.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Nikolaus Geyrhalter
Cinematography: Nikolaus Geyrhalter
Editing: Michael Palm
Sound: Peter Kutin, Florian Kindlinger
Production: NGF – Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion
Producers: Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Michael Kitzberger, Wolfgang Widerhofer, Markus Glaser
Executive producer: Michael Kitzberger
Format: DCP
Color: Color
Production Country: Austria
Production Year: 2016
Duration: 94'
Contact: NGF – Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion
Awards/Distinctions: Wild Dreamer Award for Best Documentary – Subversive FF 2016, Best Sound Design Documentary – Festival of Austrian Film 2017

Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Nikolaus Geyrhalter is a director, producer, and cameraman, born in Vienna in 1972. In 1994, when he was 22 years old, he founded his own production company Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion which focuses on documentaries and amateur fiction. He made his first film, Eisenerz, in 1992. Two years later, he shot his first documentary, Washed Ashore (1994) narrating a story about the river Danube and often strange idiosyncrasies of the people who live along its banks. Geyrhalter’s static-camera, well-paced observational films tackle their subjects head-on, whether it’s exploring the terrain in Chernobyl, Ukraine (Pripyat, 1999), tracing the route of the Dakar Rally (7915 KM, 2008), or investigating the production of processed foods (Our Daily Bread, 2005). In 2003, he received the Austrian State Award for Film Art and in 2008 his film Our Daily Bread won the Grimme Prize. Throughout the years, his films were nominated for and won numerous other awards in the world’s most renowned festivals, including (among others) IDFA, the Berlinale, Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, IndieLisboa, DocSheffield, Cinéma du Réel, Diagonale, and, most recently, Locarno.

Filmography

1994 Washed Ashore
1997 The Year After Dayton
1999 Pripyat
2001 Elsewhere
2005 Our Daily Bread
2008 7915 KM
2010 Allentsteig (TV)
2011 Abendland
2012 Danube Hospital (TV)
2013 Cern (TV)
2015 Over the Years
2016 Homo Sapiens
2018 The Border Fence
2019 Earth
2022 Matter Out of Place