The Oldenburg Internationales Film Festival will open with Mi Steinbach’s ‘Strange Neighbors,’ a nature documentary filmed on a German Elbe river island. It marks the first time a documentary has launched the festival.
The directorial debut of cinematographer Mi Steinbach, ‘Strange Neighbors’ was shot over three years on Schwarztonnensand, a roughly 2-mile-long island and nature preserve located in the middle of one of Europe’s busiest waterways. The island was created in the late 1960s from sand dredged during the deepening of the Elbe shipping channel serving the port of Hamburg and was then left to naturally re-vegetate. It is a protected area where humans are prohibited, a restriction Steinbach extends to her film; it features no human protagonists, narration, or interviews.
Robert Nacken created the film’s soundtrack and sound design. According to Steinbach, “It was never my idea to make a natural history film,” but rather “a film that doesn’t just tell you something about animal behavior or about the animals, but that tells you something about this place and above all about us, about human beings.”
The island is home to diverse habitats, including tidal floodplain forests – a landscape type largely disappeared in Europe – as well as white-tailed eagles, geese, roe deer, ground-nesting birds, foxes, and raccoon dogs. The surrounding region is heavily industrialized, including factories belonging to Dow and Airbus, and features large-scale agriculture that causes annual oxygen depletion and fish deaths. Steinbach filmed the documentary herself, often staying for weeks at a time in a wooden hut built on stilts to protect against tides.
‘Strange Neighbors’ was produced by Earth Cut Filmproduktion and funded by Film- und Medienstiftung NRW. Steinbach is seeking a sales agent and theatrical distributor, hoping the Oldenburg premiere will generate interest. She states, “This film was made for cinemas.” Steinbach will attend the festival, which runs from September 16-20.
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