Utopia-Film

At the age of 97 Riefenstahl returns to Sudan for one final farewell to the Nuba that she lived with for 8 months and photographed and filmed extensively. Müller documents her return after 23 years away and her reaction to the collapsing culture that she once celebrated so avidly in her photographs.

The story takes place in the 1960s, when computers were still big and scary. Nevertheless, this is not about yesterday's technology, but much more about the technology of the day after tomorrow. Ray Müller has incorporated the current problems of chip researchers, especially the question of artificial intelligence, into the topic.

Two couples and their children go on an excursion into the forest. They are young, successful and well-set parts in today's social-political establishment. When their children disappear in a storm, the entire construct of their friendship starts to crumble. Very soon, their bourgeoisie façade falls and the four turn into the profile of a lost culture. What follows is an odyssey through the forests that turns more and more into a journey into the metaphysical. The story is told in fragments and out of chronological order. The forest and the film imagery act as a poetic expression of the inner mind, creating the metaphorical psychogram of a lost cul-ture that desperately looking for a way out and a future. It is a poetic portrait of today's society.