Nikolaus Geyrhalter is one of world cinema’s most renowned and celebrated documentary filmmakers. Famous for his unmistakable style which draws on calm, carefully framed wide shots with an eye for geometric compositions, his films eschew commentary or music to create visually striking accounts of places at the margins of our perception while, at the same time, cataloging social phenomena and periods of upheaval in a cinematically epic fashion.

Geyrhalter’s static-camera, well-paced observational films tackle their subjects head-on. Whether it’s exploring the terrain of post-disaster Chernobyl (Pripyat), reflecting on a post-human world (Homo Sapiens), or investigating modern day food production (Our Daily Bread), Geyrhalter’s films are nothing short of startling works of art. 

DISC 1: HOMO SAPIENS

(2016 / 94 min / color / no dialogue)

Homo Sapiens is a film about the finiteness and fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being. What will remain of our lives after we’re gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, though humanity has disappeared. Now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature after being taken from it so long ago. Homo Sapiens is an ode to humanity as seen from a possible future scenario.

"This is the most extraordinary documentary I have seen in years." —The Guardian

"A gloriously beautiful documentary of an unimagined future." —Hong Kong Film Festival

DISC 2: OVER THE YEARS

(2015 / 188 min / color / German with English subtitles)

An observation of what happens to a few manual laborers over a period of 10 years. A film about the process of becoming unemployed, told from the perspective of people who know. It represents a memorial to industrial sectors in the process of dying out in Europe.

"An exceptional film." —Screen Daily

DISC 3: ABENDLAND 

(2011 / 90 min / color / German with English subtitles)

Western standard of living and the urge to exclude others from it are at the core of this film. Entirely shot at night, Geyrhalter takes us on a very personal journey through Europe and the structures that guarantee our “civilized” world. Sometimes darkness can help us see things more clearly.

"An artful amalgam of perfectly framed, seemingly disconnected moments." —The New York Times

DISC 4: OUR DAILY BREAD 

(2005 / 92 min / color / no dialogue)

Our Daily Bread reveals the little-known world of high-tech agriculture. In a series of visually stunning, continuously tracking wide-screen images that seem right out of a science fiction movie, we see the places where food is cultivated and processed: surreal landscapes optimized for agricultural machinery, clean rooms in cool industrial buildings designed for maximum efficiency, and elaborate machines that operate on a ‘disassembly line’ basis.

"Devastating! A Must-See!" —The New York Times

"An invigoratingly subtle form of political cinema." —Cinema Scope

DISC 5 & 6: ELSEWHERE 

(2001 / 240 min / color / English subtitles)

The year 2000, elsewhere. Twelve months. Twelve episodes. Weeks, days, single moments of different ways of life. Tradition and change. People of different cultural and geographical background. A film about their lives. A journey through voices and sounds from elsewhere, with no commentary added. Landscapes, outlooks on the world, outlooks on life: desert, snow, valley, jungle, ice, rainforest, stones, swamps, mountains, the sea, forests, a South Sea atoll. An homage to humanity at the beginning of the 21st century.

"Cumulative effect is extraordinary, offering a refreshed view of how people live and raise families with little technological aid, yet with increasing dependency on the modern, outside world." —Variety

"Shockingly beautiful!" —Village Voice

DISC 7: PRIPYAT 

(1999 / 100 min / black & white / Russian with English subtitles)

After the catastrophe in 1986, a 30 km restricted zone was erected around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and 116,000 persons were evacuated from this area. Pripyat is a portrait of the people who still live and work there, and of those who have moved back. What is life like for these people, a life with the invisible and incomprehensible danger of radioactivity? How do they deal with the aftereffects of an accident which no one could have foreseen? Four protagonists tell their stories and provide a look at everyday life in their zone. 

"A nonfiction horror story." —Variety

SPECIAL FEATURES

• First-ever comprehensive survey representing more than 17 years of Geyrhalter’s films, three of which have never before been released in the U.S.

• Booklet featuring Alejandro Bachmann’s “Spaces in Time,” published in English for the first time; excerpted interviews with Geyrhalter; and Elsewhere location notes

• New high-definition Blu-ray edition of Our Daily Bread

• Theatrical trailers

"Geyrhalter’s work is prime for discovery or rediscovery, and a new box set from Icarus Films provides the perfect opportunity to dive into it. In an age of documentaries that throw around facts and figures and ultimately leave little impression, these films are more vital than ever, both politically and aesthetically." —Dan Schindel, Hyperallergic

"With their fixed-frame camerawork, meticulous composition, and patient, nonjudgmental gaze, these films stake out a territory all their own: clearly documentary, but in no sense expository." —Michael Sicinski, The Village Voice

"This fantastic new set showcases six of Geyrhalter’s most essential films. Boasting excellent transfers and audio, not to mention an expert array of subtitling of languages from all over the globe... All of it, though, is handled with utmost care." —Jim Tudor, ScreenAnarchy

"Austrian iconoclast Nikolaus Geyrhalter has made several eye-opening, thought-provoking documentaries over the past couple of decades, and this set collects six of them, all worth seeing for the director’s artfully composed, brilliantly shot and often unsettling images." —Kevin Filipski, The Flip Side