Halbtotal Film Carpatia

Carpatia: Documentary - D/AT 2004, 127 Min.
Production: Halbtotal Film GmbH & Co.KG in coproduction with Hektor Rydzewski Bild + Audio, Geyrhalter Film and ZDF/3sat. Promoted with means of the film foundation NW, the Hessian film foundation and the film fund Vienna.
Script / Director: Andrzej Klamt, Ulrich Rydzewski
Prices & Awards: Best film - Festival dos Festivais, Goias (Brasilien)
"Silberner Hirsch" - Ecofilms, International Film and Visual Arts Festival 2005, Rhodos (GR)
"First Prize" - CinemAmbiente Filmfestival 2004, Turin
FBW - especially precious
Nomination "Best Camera" German Cameraprize 2005
Nomination "Best Editor" Prize for the best cut 2005

Content:: Starting a few kilometres east from Vienna, over the whole Slovakia, Southern Poland, Ukraine, Romania and Hungary the Carpathian Bow traces a 1500 kilometre long mountain chain. All five adjoining states in the Carpathian region have three distinctive similarities: Until 1918 the territory belonged to a multinational Austrian-Hungarian monarchy; After 1945 the Carpathians went under the influence of the Soviet Union; Before the Jewish Holocaust the Jews have been living in this region for over hundreds of years. Due to the seclusion, its landscapes and its original cultures are still very well preserved today compared with other European areas.
"Carpatia" - takes you on a time travel through the rural mountainous regions of Europe, which may seem outright foreign to us, but they nonetheless allow us to connect with common cultural and historical roots.

Press: "Raised pictures and enormous quiet"
- Anke Westphal, Berliner Zeitung

""A tender approach towards people who live in solitude and loneliness."
- Fritz Göttler, Süddeutsche Zeitung

"Actually this isn't a history but life. For some this is hard to believe: There are people who eke out their existence on mountains and in wood huts and are happy with it."
Ekkehard Kern, Schnitt

"This documentation belongs to the most remarkable ones which could be seen in this genre within the last few years. Detailed images of wind, water, animal kingdom and of people which seem to live in the middle of the last century and report from their weekday create the magic of this film."
- Kleine Zeitung, Graz

"A trans-temporal fate lies over this pre-modern world. People and animals run in the yoke of the fate. The time passes and changes nothing. God is far and anyway ubiquitous. What is the luck of their life? What do they hope for? What comes after the death? The film creators, Andrzej Klamt and Ulrich Rydzewski, ask for the last things. Their protagonists answer with a philosophical seriousness. The camera seems to be forgotten."
- Christoph Dieckmann, Die Zeit

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