LAMPEDUSA by Peter Schreiner - official trailer

Two people return to the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa. Giulia overcame a personal crisis here, Zakaria fled here from the civil war in his homeland of Somalia.
Schreiner tells about them, about innermost thoughts, existential questions and fears, about transiency: A search for meaning that remains fragmentary, moving between memory and now. The past presses into the monologues and conversations in the present of the cinematic image. It has written itself visibly into the skin, faces, and bodies that Schreiner explores in close ups, which become practically perceptible, yet nonetheless remain highly artificial.
The strict, sensual beauty of these images, the play with abstraction of brilliant black-and-white, of light and shadow, the long, calm takes, the concentration on details all create the space for an intuitive, concentrated awareness, a space of encounter.
The site of this encounter is concrete, but for the characters, the sparse, brittle landscape of Lampedusa turns into a stage of sorts, and a projection; an abstract space. Just as this island exists as a mere idea for most of us, as a place where political action becomes manifest, and also a crisis-the relationship of old Europe and young Africa, the dynamics of resistance and mesmerized attraction, of inside and outside. Schreiner drafts Lampedusa as a universal, internal narrative, as intense space of experience and association, oscillating between documentary and fictional elements. Freed of the necessity to explain, the film itself becomes a search and interrogation-of the characters, cinematic form, and our own present realities.
(Barbara Pichler)
LAMPEDUSA / Austria 2013 - 2015 / HD - DCP / black and white / 16:9 / 3.1 mono / running time: 130 min. (25f/s) / cast: Giuliana Pachner, Zakaria Mohamed Ali, Pasquale De Rubeis, Anna Matina, Awad Elkish / assistant director and producer: Maria Schreiner / assistant camera, lighting, make up: Isabella Schreiner / sound recording and mixing: Johannes Schmelzer-Ziringer / concept, realisation, camera, editing: Peter Schreiner / production: Peter Schreiner Filmproduktion - echt.zeit.film / world-distribution: sixpackfilm / supported by The Arts Division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria - Innovative Film Austria, Vienna City Administration, cultural department / filmed 2013 / 2014, Lampedusa, Italy
IFFI-Award for Best Documentary, Prize of the Town of Innsbruck, 2016
Mirabile Dictu ICFF - Award, "The Silver Fish" for Best Director, Rome, 2016
Human District IFF - Award, "Human Time" for Best Feature Film, Belgrade 2016
IFF El Ojo Cojo - Award, "Guino" for best Feature Fiction Film, Madrid, 2016
Best Feature Film
FI de Cine por los Derechos Humanos, Bogota, 2017
Diagonale, Festival of Austrian Film, Graz, Austria 2015 (Austrian premiere) / International Filmfestival Rotterdam, The Netherlands 2016 (International premiere) / IFFI - International Filmfestival Innsbruck, Austria 2016 (documentary competition) / Cinema Isola - Kino Otok International Filmfestival, Slovenia 2016 / Karlovy Vary International Filmfestival, Czech Republic 2016 / Human District International Filmfestival, Belgrade, Serbia 2016 (feature competition) / Mirabile Dictu - International Catholic Filmfestival, Rome 2016 (final competition) / A Film for Peace - International Filmfestival, Udine, Italy 2016 / Indie International Film Festival Belo Horizonte, Brazil 2016 / Cinemigrante International Filmfestival, Buenos Aires, Argentina 2016 / Sose International Filmfestival, Yerewan, Armenia 2016 / Festival International du Nouveau Cinéma 2016, Montreal, Canada / International Filmfestival Carthago 2016, Tunis, Tunisia (as part of Cinema of the World) / Scandinavian International Filmfestival 2016, Helsinki, Finland / Eindhoven Film Festival 2016, The Netherlands / European International Film Festival Mainstream&Underground 2016, Moscow, Russian Federation / This Human world International Filmfestival 2016, Vienna, Austria / 7th Philosophical Film Festival 2017, Skopje, Macedonia / Eunic-Project 'Frontiers and their States' 2017, Zagreb, Rijeka, Croatia / Festival Internacional de Cine por los Derechos Humanos 2017, Bogota, Colombia / Cinemigrante International Filmfestival 2017, Barcelona, Spain / Festival Internacional de Cine de Autor 2017, Guadalajara, Mexico / Wolves Independent International Film Awards 2016, Vilnius, Lithuania (finalist)