People Next Door 2018 / Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit / Germany 1971
Although only three people and minimal funding were involved in its creation, this picture is one of the most important documentaries of all time. The story of Fini Straubinger, a deaf-blind woman, demonstrates what it means to be truly alone. How can deaf-blind people understand our world? And can they reconcile themselves to their fate?
Although a self-described eccentric, Werner Herzog always rejected the characterization of his protagonists as outsiders or marginalized lunatics. They are not the crazies – it’s society which has cast them aside or simply forgotten about them. In The Land of Silence and Darkness this is often literally true, as in the case of a deaf-blind man who opts to live in a cowshed, or of young Viktor, who has been left to the mercy of unimaginable isolation his entire life. Some of them, like the remarkably empathetic Fini Straubinger, never give up, however, using their indomitable will to convince society that deaf-blind people are here to stay and that they must be taken into account rather than left to exist forgotten and unloved.
Nikola Paggio
85 min / Color, DCP
Director Werner Herzog
/ Screenplay Werner Herzog
/ Dir. of Photography Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein
/ Editor Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
/ Production Werner Herzog Filmproduktion
/ Cast Fini Straubinger
/ Sales Werner Herzog Film GmbH
Werner Herzog (b. 1942, Munich, Germany). Selected filmography: The Land of Silence and Darkness (Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit, 1971), Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972), Stroszek (1977), Woyzeck (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), My Best Fiend (1999), Grizzly Man (2005), Rescue Dawn (2006), Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (Happy People – Ein Jahr in der Taiga, 2010), Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016)
Werner Herzog Film GmbH
Türkenstrasse 91, 80799, Mratín
Germany
Phone: +49 89 330 407 67
Fax: +49 89 330 407 68
E-mail: [email protected]
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