Beasts Of No Nation
An essay film about crowds, nationalism, and the loneliness of rollercoasters.
Born in London to Polish immigrants and now living in Germany, Krzysztof Honowski is very confused by what is happening right now in the two countries that he comes from. Examining the roots of his own political disappointment Honowski, together with the German actress Laura Sundermann, attempts to create a narrative that “speaks for a generation”.
This is of course impossible, and this parody of a grand narrative soon gets derailed by the small details of the everyday. Honowski and Sundermann’s narrator must instead confront their own cowardice, exhaustion, and disavowal.
Beasts of No Nation combines found footage from American documentaries about rollercoasters and fan shot footage of Eastern European football crowds with staged sequences. This collage slowly unfolds to the sound of a damaged copy of Luigi Nono’s Un Volto, Del Mare, a piece written shortly after the unfulfilled revolutions of 1968.
Director Krzysztof Honowski Written by Krzysztof Honowski and Laura Sundermann Performance and narration Laura Sundermann Sound Mix David Beule with the participation of Bradley Davies and Kalli
Single Channel HD Digital Video, 2019
World Premiere at the Ruhrtriennale, Bochum on 15.9.2019
Festival World Premiere in the Official Selection of the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen on 13.05.2020
Selected by the German Short Film Association for the Emerging Artists Vol. 5 programme.
Further screenings in 2021 at Stuttgarter Filmwinter (DE), Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival (FR), International Short Film Festival Dresden (DE), Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival (UKR), SAC Livorno (IT), Izmir Short FilmFestival (TR); Istanbul Experimental Film Festival (TR); Porto/Post/Doc (PT) and in the Short Film Corner of the Marché du Film, Festival de Cannes (FR).
