Magnificent7 Belgrade 2022 Matter Out of Place

This text is written by Magnificent7 directors Svetlana and Zoran Popovic:

Austria, 2022 
110 minutes 
director: Nikolaus Geyrhalter

A grandiose fresco about the state of our planet. After extraordinary films Homo sapiens and Earth, the great Austrian documentary filmmaker once again shows traces of man around the world, traces that are increasingly becoming an unavoidable testimony of our existence.

The title “Matter out of place”, or abbreviated MOOP, refers to marking everything that does not originally belong to the soil, no matter how small, and the term was created through a project “leave no traces” initiated in the USA.

All over the planet, regardless of the level of development and wealth, culture or religious differences, man is extremely and irresistibly productive in the production of all he declares that he does not need. And the scale of what man rejects litters the planet and surprises more and more with its persistent accumulation and long-lasting existance. Through visually superior scenes Nikolaus Geyrhalter takes us on an incredible journey from highly civilized Austria to poor suburbs somewhere in Nepal, from the tourist paradise of Maldives to the shores of Albania, on land and sea and under the sea. Distant, extremely aestheticized, often surreal scenes reveal to us incomprehensible and unmeasurable human interventions in open spaces – gigantic landfills and sophisticated, somewhat monstrous waste processing factories. The author creates a powerful documentary film that, as it develops, confronts us more and more with intractable problems and with the astonishing arrogance of the human species. The film explodes in the final sequence in complete counterpoint to the previous course as an important promise for a different world.

Certainly one of the most important documentaries of the 21st century.

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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