16-22 November 2015

L'Alternativa Parallel

Hubert Sauper

We Come As Friends (Hubert Sauper)

Filmmaker, writer, producer and pilot Hubert Sauper (Kitzbühel, Austria, 1966) makes political nonfiction films shot in cinéma-vérité style. He studied film directing at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien and the Université Paris 8 and teaches film classes in Europe and the United States.

This retrospective will include several of Sauper's early short and medium-length films, as well as his debut feature, Darwin's Nightmare (2004), which was nominated for an Academy Award and became one of the most controversial films of the decade. His latest film, We Come as Friends (2014), also screening at l’Alternativa, sees Sauper return to Africa piloting a self-made plane from France to Sudan.

“I understand much more about myself being European since I've been travelling a lot in Africa. Both continents have such a tight co-relationship, thousands of years of pathological dialectic, which is basically what I'm trying to describe. I'd like to describe worlds which are on the friction lines where worlds collide. [...] The essence of this kind of filmmaking is not only to document but also to explore what you feel as much as you can. Often, this contains more truth than what is the obvious truth.” Hubert Sauper

Hubert Sauper will be at l'Alternativa 2015 to give the masterclass The Art of Mastering Nonfiction Filmmaking, where he will talk about his work.