BEST OF PRESS COMMENTS
“Festivals like Berlin help to remind us what pictures can accomplish, whether that means taking an incredibly populist subject and re-contextualizing it for an elite arthouse audience, as Austrian helmer Nikolaus Geyrhalter does by revisiting the now-alien landscapes of abandoned cinemas, shopping malls and sports arenas in 'Homo Sapiens'“ Variety
“An aesthetically austere catalog of contemporary ruin.“ (...) “Similar in form to the director's previous nonfiction studies (Our Daily Bread, Over the Years), this wordless assemblage of fixed shots is as much a museum piece as it is a strictly art-house item, inviting viewers to sit back and let the imagery consume them. Far from commercial, it's still a compelling modern study of man vs. nature, with the latter clearly getting the upper hand.“ (...) “If the imagery can be at once breathtaking and disconcerting – one devastated seaside city looks like the set of Inception, another wreck in the desert belongs in Planet of the Apes – there's a sort of consolation in the fact that the natural world will continue to live on despite us. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.“ Hollywood Reporter
“Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter's beautifully bleak documentary Homo Sapiens is a wordless collection of empty, abandoned, man-made structures (churches, malls, schools, military bases, and nuclear reactors, to name a few). The undoctored subjects, from Fukushima to parts of the U.S., Europe, and South America, reveal a stark landscape of decrepitude slowly being reclaimed by nature's obstinate ability to regenerate itself. If great art takes facts and refracts them into multiple truths, then the Berlinale is host to a myriad of glittering prisms.“ Observer
“as intriguing as it is overwhelming“ BAFICI Festival, Buenos Aires
“A gloriously beautiful documentary of an unimagined future“ Hong Kong Filmfestival
“Nikolaus Geyrhalter's films are also called film poems. He does not go for a quick information round, but chooses a quiet rhythm and a poetic rather than narrative approach that offers space for reflection. ... Thanks to the distant, recording attitude of the director, the scenes have an almost unearthly, weird, abstract beauty.“ DOCVILLE Festival in Leuven, Belgium
“Die Welt ist auch ohne uns ganz schön.“ Süddeutsche Zeitung
“A typically masterful, disturbing work, scary in its compositional perfection and unblinking depiction of mankind's effect on the planet.“ Anthology Film Archives
“One of the premier nonfiction filmmakers working today.“ Village Voice
“Meticulous, provocative“ The New York Times