The Wakhan Front - Neither Heaven nor Earth (Ni le ciel ni la terre)

About

Film by the French director & media artist Clément Cogitore

With an introduction from film scientist Friederike Horstmann

In the context of our current exhibition ›Evoking Reality‹ we show the award-winning... film The Wakhan Front - Neither Heaven nor Earth (2015) by French filmmaker and media artist Clément Cogitore. Afghanistan in 2014. The international troops gradually withdraw and Captain Antarés is to monitor with his men a valley that is tactically of great importance. Everything seems to be going according to plan until the soldiers are mysteriously beginning to disappear individually, inexorably. The omnipresence of military surveillance techniques allows the paranoid gaze of observing to emerge as a metaphor for war. The fearful eyes of the soldiers stare at the darkness, visibility is transformed and withdrawn, the enemy remains a phantom. Through scenes such as this Cogitore contrives a contemporary anti-war epic evoking the complex psychological dimensions of armed conflict.

Introduction:

Friederike Horstmann is a scientific employee at the film seminar of the Freie Universität Berlin. Her texts on cinema and art appear in Perlentaucher's cinema column and in the Cargo Film/Media/Culture magazine. For the Daimler Art Collection, she has worked as a freelance employee for several years.

Admission is free. The introduction will take place in German. The film is shown in French original version with English subtitles.

Registration requested: art.collection@daimler.com