Dörthe Eickelberg
Augen Unterschrift

It is said that you cannot miss what you never had. But if you are lacking something, if there is an empty space inside of yourself, can you feel the hole?

I always had the strong desire to go to Iceland. As if a piece of myself was hidden there – waiting for me to be discovered. To me, this nature has a soul.

Whenever I enter the travel section of a bookstore, the first country I pick is Iceland. Longingly I look at the images of Icelandic nature   – wild, powerful, contradictory, almost unfriendly. The few people living on this island check their emails once a day, go to church every Sunday and earn about 25.575 $ per year. But then, it only takes a few pages to read statistics claiming that every second Icelander believes in trolls, ghosts and elves. Technology and wilderness, Christianity and Paganism door to door. What is so different about Iceland?

I come from an urban area in Germany - a country so highly populated, that there is no space left for supernatural beings. The clouds hide themselves behind chimneys, and the moon wanders in back alleys. Natural wonders happen when you are asleep - tired of a long working day. The daily sunrise is as surprising as the morning sound of the alarm clock.

With this film, I want to take the spectator on a little rediscovery of nature. Since the story is about believing rather than knowing, it was clear that the film wouldn't give a solution. Instead, I wanted to confront the facts with the fantasy – me as the one trying to find proofs, the Icelanders as those giving hints and talking in unfinished sentences. At the same time, the style as well should question what is the story and what is the truth. Stop motion and time lapses are good techniques to envision the magic in nature. When animation breaks with the rules of nature, our logic expires – and leaves open space for us to rethink and imagine.

I still don't know whether elves exist or not. I don't know whether God exist either. Or us. Or nothing at all.

I grew up in a generation that has lost the faith. Or worse, we never had one. Do we feel the gap? Well, we cannot decide to believe again. But we can imagine. It is the question mark, not the answer, that keeps us going.

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