DOCUMENTARY FILM
Brezmejno / Beyond Boundaries

BEYOND BOUNDARIES by Peter Zach

English/Original Title: BREZMEJNO. Write and director: Peter Zach. Text: Aleš Šteger. Camera: Thomas Plenert. Sound: Ivan Antić. Editing: Peter Zach, Hanna Slak. Music: Jelena Ždrale, Nino de Gleria. Production: jana cisar filmproduktion. Producer: Jana Cisar. Length: 95 min. Distribution: jana cisar filmproduktion

BEYOND BOUNDARIES is a European road movie set along the scar-lines inflicted by war. It tells of rupture in the lives of inhabitants, of those living in places where the BORDER is called Meja or Granica or Frontiera – along Slovenia’s borders with Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Italy. The film explores these borders – their nature, their creation and how they change.Is a state without borders possible? Are emotions, thoughts, relationships, languages and ideas curtailed by borders?
The different landscapes of the various regions and the experiences of their inhabitants meld to create a cinematic kaleidoscope of sights and stories.Thomas Plenert’s sensitive and nuanced cinematography documents people and places by means of extraordinary images.
Texts by Aleš Šteger accompany the documentary material into a literary past and present. They speak of the sea, of mountains, rivers, forests and lowlands. The poems evoke constant change and displacement. Nothing stays the same, not even the borders that pass like shifting sand dunes along the valleys, lakes and rivers before receding into nothingness.
This poetry of transformation is the essence of BEYOND BOUNDARIES.The film BEYOND BOUNDARIES is a visual feast and a philosophical journey to the heart of Europe. The protagonists encountered en route and their personal stories mirror their lives beyond boundaries. Yet serve, too, as a reminder of the threat to common-ground in an unbounded Europe where, despite all things, borders are again being mooted…

Peter Zach, born in Graz, Austria. Zach has made numerous feature-length documentaries, including the documentary nominated Austria’s best film in 1994: Malli. Peter Zach was responsible for the script and executive production management of Sasha Waltz’s film “Allee der Kosmonauten”, which won the 1999 Grimme Prize, and, for the script to Othmar Schmiderer’s “Back to Africa” (2005/06).  Peter Zach is living and working in Berlin as a writer, director and cameraman.

 

On a postcard he wrote these words to me:
Without borders, I might have been an angel, or an ocean.
Hence I am a human being.
A tiny being in a tiny land.
My land is smaller than my pocket,
thus there are borders everywhere.
Everything is a confine.
(Aleš Šteger)

 

FROM THE CRITICS


Claus Löser, Berliner Zeitung

Based on texts by the poet Aleš Šteger, the film circumnavigates the small country squeezed between the Alps the Adriatic and the Balkans.

Documented by the excellent photographs of Thomas Plenert, the expedition reveals captivating regions as well as unique, rebellious people with a vibrant relationship to their environment and their history. But this collective portrait never slips into romanticism. Contradictions both past and present remain. Zach’s film testifies that even in crisis, there is hope, and that cinema is still capable of showcasing the shimmering spectrum of opposites that lie between crisis and hope.

 

Dirk Dotzauer, Tagesspiegel

How tender Slovenia was!

The great thing about Zach’s film is that it’s unscathed by today’s knowledge of the fall of this European dream, which threatens to remain unfulfilled for several reasons. While “Beyond Boundaries” documents a moment in time, the reflections of the poet Aleš Šteger on inner and outer boundaries narrated by a female voice, transcend time itself.

 

Bert Rebhandl, Cargo

My favorite part of this positively moving film is a conversation about the Mur: a river that serves as a boundary for much of its course, and that is presently doing something worrying many people these days – It’s migrating. Peter Zach’s film already seems to come from another era in European history, and while the credits are rolling, Peter Zach illustrates how things have changed in the meantime.

 

Durs Grünbein, poet

The film shows us a dream image, a state of transition. It is a snapshot of a successful European utopia. A Europe while everything was still all right, before the refugees came and the idyll shattered.

We are shown a time-out – the one we were all charmed by in our best European fairy tales. The poets thought that life should be spent exploring our own country. This film shows the reflection of that promise receding in the rear-view mirror. You drive to the next highway rest stop and realize: that’s it.