International documentary film festival
March 30 - April 6, 2025
Kaptol Boutique Cinema, Zagreb

Landshaft (Landshaft)

Daniel Kötter

Landshaft

Landshaft sketches the psychogeography of a geopolitically charged landscape and its inhabitants between extractivism, war and displacement. In the form of a journey in eastern Armenia, the film follows human and non-human actors as they make their way through the landscape, from Lake Sevan to the Sotk gold mine, occupied by Azerbaijan since the Karabakh War in 2020. It weaves together stories from the war and the gold mining operation, which appear as two facets of the same violence inflicted on the landscape. By giving a voice to those who watch with concern as the powers on both sides tear each other apart at their expense, Landshaft reveals the profound psychogeography subjected to the deadly logic of post-Soviet ethno-nationalism.

Germany, Armenia 2023, '97

DIRECTOR: Daniel Kötter

SCENARIO: Daniel Kötter

CAMERA: Daniel Kötter

MONTAGE: Daniel Kötter

PRODUCERS: Daniel Kötter

PRODUCTION: Jana Cisar, Nune Hovhannisyan

FESTIVALS & AWARDS:

Visions du Réel (2023)
DokuFest (2023)
UNDERDOX (2023)
Cork IFF (2023)
RIDM (2023)
Association of German Film Critics: Best Documentary (2024)

Daniel Kötter

Daniel Kötter

Daniel Kötter is an international filmmaker and theater director. His works alternate between different media and institutional contexts and combine experimental film techniques with performative and documentary elements. They have been shown worldwide at numerous film and video art festivals, in galleries, theaters and concert halls.

His major works include the music theater trilogies Falsche Arbeit, Falsche Freizeit, Freizeitspektakel (2008-10), KREDIT RECHT LIEBE (2013-16) and STADT LAND FLUSS (2017-19, all with Hannes Seidl), the multi-channel trilogy Arbeit und Freizeit (2009-2011) as well as the film, performance and discourse series state-theatre about the urban conditions of performativity in the cities of Lagos, Tehran, Berlin, Detroit, Beirut, Mönchengladbach (2009-2014 with Constanze Fischbeck). His extensive film and text work KATALOG (2013) was made in 13 countries around the Mediterranean with a particular interest in practices in space.

In 2017-20 he worked on the documentary film trilogy Hashti Tehran (2017, 60 ’), Desert View (2018, 84’) and Rift Finfinnee (2020, 80 ’) about urban peripheries in Tehran, Cairo and Addis Ababa. Hashti Tehran won the special award of the German Short Film Award, Rift Finfinnee the DEFA Award at DOK Leipzig.

Daniel Kötter is currently working on a series of spatial performances and 360° films on the landscape and social consequences of extractivism in Germany, West Papua, DR Congo and Estonia under the title landscapes and bodies.

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