Image of movie The Natural History of Destruction
Image of movie The Natural History of Destruction
Image of movie The Natural History of Destruction
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The Natural History of Destruction

Die Naturgeschichte der Zerstörung
Sergei Loznitsa
Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands 2022
110 min
V'22

"When the storm bursts over Germany, they will look back to the days of Lübeck, and Rostock and Cologne as a man caught in the blasts of a hurricane would look back to the gentle zephyrs of last summer.” This British comment on the massive aerial attacks on Nazi Germany expresses a controversially discussed topic regarding the Second World War. Is it morally justifiable to expand warfare to directly affect civil society in order to defeat a rogue regime? In his latest documentary, Loznitsa refers to a book by German writer W.G. Sebald, who raises this very question, which still resonates to this day. Loznitsa’s film expands the same question to the realm of cinema by way of an experiment: compiled from German and British historical film footage, without any comment or ideological bias, the Ukrainian filmmaker confronts his audience with a cycle of war and death. Instead of differing between the political sides, the film indicates two other categories: the technocratic (propagandistic) image of the apparatus belli that consists of procedures and representational codes – and the image of humanity, when women in ruins look into the camera, when refugees without shoes carry their belongings, when dead bodies lie in the streets as people pass by. Can cinema answer Sebald’s question? (Gunnar Landsgesell)

Sergei LoznitsaLANDSCAPE (2003), FABRIKA (2004), BLOKADA (2005), ARTEL (2006), PREDSTAVLENIE (2008), MY JOY (2010), O MILAGRE DE SANTO ANTONIO (2012), THE FOG (2012), LETTER (2013), MAIDAN (2014), PONTS DE SARAJEVO (2014), THE OLD JEWISH CEMETERY (2015), SOBYTIE (2015), AUSTERLITZ (2016), A GENTLE CREATURE (2017), DONBASS (2018), VICTORY DAY (2018), STATE FUNERAL (2019), CELLES QUI CHANTENT (2020)

Credits
  • Sergei Loznitsa nach einem Buch von Winfried Georg Sebald
  • Vladimir Golovnitski
  • Danielius Kokanauskis
  • Christiaan Verbeek
LOOKSfilm, Atoms & Void

Progress Film

DCP
Farbe und schwarzweiß
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