Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Né en 1972 à Vienne (Autriche).
Documentariste et photographe autrichien engagé, Nikolaus Geyrhalter traite l’actualité de manière décalée et très personnelle ; il aborde ainsi entre autres les domaines de l’écologie, de l’économie et de la politique. Il tisse de film en film (« Elsewhere » en 2001 ; « Pripyat » en 1999 ; « L’année après Dayton » en 1997) une ?uvre forte et singulière. Il réalise « Notre pain quotidien » en 2007.

Born 1972 in Vienna.

2009
THE FINAL DAYS (DIE LETZTEN TAGE) – in production
(A + 100 min. + 35mm (HDCam) + Feature Documentary)
A textile factory with a long history in the outskirts of Lower Austria is going into bankruptcy. THE FINAL DAYS is an observation of what happens to its few manual laborers over a period of several years – a film about the process of becoming unemployed after having worked in a permanent state of emergency, told from the perspective of people who know, and what remains or becomes of life afterwards.


2008
7915 KM
(A + 106 min. + 35mm (HDCam) + Cinemascope + Feature Documentary)
On the trail of the 2007 Dakar Rally 7915 KM undertakes a search, along the way encountering the variety to be found in Africa’s present in Morocco, Sahrawi Republic, Mauritania, Mali and Senegal. Keeping the sobering reality in mind, it creates an homage to humanity and slowness which questions deep-seated perceptions and the role of Europeans in numerous, presumably African, problems.


2005
OUR DAILY BREAD (UNSER TÄGLICH BROT)
(A + 90 min. + 35mm (HDCam) + Feature Documentary)
To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, OUR DAILY BREAD looks without commenting into the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming in Europe: an industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism. People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting role in the logistics of this system which provides our society’s standard of living.


2001
ELSEWHERE
(A + 240 min. + 35mm (HDCam) + Feature Documentary)
The year 2000, elsewhere. 12 months. 12 episodes. Weeks, days, single moments of different ways of life. Tradition and change. People of different cultural and geographical background. A film about their life. Landscapes, outlooks on the world, outlooks on life: Desert, snow, valley, jungle, ice, rainforest, stones, swamps, mountains, the sea, forests, a South-Sea atoll. At the beginning of the 21st century.


1999
PRIPYAT
(A + 100 min. + 35 mm (S16mm) + b/w + Feature Documentary)
After the catastrophe in 1986, a 30-km restricted zone was erected around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and 116,000 persons were evacuated from this area. PRIPYAT is a portrait of the people who still live and work there, and of those who have moved back, in’their’ zone. What is everyday life like for these people, a life with the invisible and incomprehensible danger of radioactivity?


1997
THE YEAR AFTER DAYTON (DAS JAHR NACH DAYTON)
(A + 204 min. + 35mm (HDCam) + Feature Documentary)
A portrait of the first year of peace in Bosnia. this is a human story played out before a background of a war which still makes itself felt. Rajko, the mechanic and his family still not back home; Nermin, the actor, who lost both legs in the war; Halid, a shepherd, risking his life to visit friends: A story of a possible life together, which has on the other hand become impossible in many cases.


1994
WASHED ASHORE (ANGESCHWEMMT)
(A + 86 min. + 35mm (S16mm) + b/w + Feature Documentary)
Life on the Danube is essentially determined by two factors: the river itself and the often strange idiosyncrasies of the people who live along its banks. And they are multifarious: fishermen and graveyard wardens, Buddhist monks, allotment holders on Danube Island, stranded shippers, tramps and soldiers. All linked by the great current against which they swim. Told in tranquil images by an unobtrusive camera.