Rift Finfinnee / Riftul Finfinnee

EN 

There is something terrifying about the landscapes around the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, with the unsettling mumbled murmur contrasting with the serene sounds of nature. We listen to radio show fragments and off-screen voices, the ordinary discussions of which only amplify the anticipative anxiety of an imminent disaster we can’t yet see, but feel intuitively on a visceral level. The wide shots and the steady pan shots of the changing Ethiopian landscape evoke a heavy uneasiness. The city’s poverty-ridden peripheries give the sensation of a construction site without a completion date, with the voices of the locals overlapping in collective lamentation as they whisper about expropriations, state crimes, ethnic issues, and protests which are never explained, but only hinted at. The movie offers us glimpses from a divided and tensed social reality. We witness a country in transition from the rural to the urban, where agriculture is gradually swallowed up by industrialization, the collateral victims of which we watch in resignation. The tectonic shifts and the active volcanoes which threaten to transform the area over time seem but a reflection of the social tensions, with ecological changes faithfully mimicking the social ones. (Monica Stan)

Daniel Kötter

BIO RO

Daniel Kötter este un cineast și regizor de teatru muzical internațional. Proiectele sale oscilează între diverse tipuri de media și contexte instituționale și combină tehnici de cinema experimental cu elemente din artele spectacolului și din filmul documentar. Lucrările sale au fost prezentate în cadrul unui mare număr de festivaluri de film și de artă video, în galerii de artă, teatre și săli de concerte din întreaga lume. Cel mai recent proiect al lui Kötter este Landscape and Bodies, o serie de spatial performances și filme în 360° despre peisaj, mediul înconjurător și consecințele sociale ale extracțiilor de resurse naturale în Germania, Papua de Vest, Republica Democrată Congo și Estonia.

BIO EN

Daniel Kötter is an international filmmaker and music theater director. His works alternate between different media and institutional contexts and combine experimental film techniques with performative and documentary elements. They have been shown worldwide at numerous film and video art festivals, in galleries, theaters and concert halls. His most recent project is Landscapes and Bodies, a series of spatial performances and 360° films on the landscape and social consequences of extractivism in Germany, West Papua, DR Congo, and Estonia.