Synopsis
June 1971 - in a fluid landscape completely below sea level, a young biology student dies during the last year of his studies, leaving behind an unfinished scientific collection. More than fifty years later, a group of ecologists and volunteers are trying to understand and document the same environment as it is today.
Director's comment: Our film examines a region left unnamed but unmistakably shaped by the powerful forces of nature and time, a landscape transformed to the needs of humans over decades.
While researching in the local archive, we discovered the collection of a young biology student, Lieven Braber, who had documented the environmental changes in his home region during the 1960s. After his untimely death, his unfinished work was donated to the archive by his mother. This material marked the beginning of what ‘Seen From Here, I Feel Like Belonging’ came to be.
Shortly after, we found ourselves immersed in a network of ecologists and volunteers, all pursuing similar questions that Lieven once posed—now set against a much-altered environment. Their work, too, will someday be part of the region’s ever-growing archive. Their work, too, remains mostly hidden from the public eye. We set out on a field trip with our protagonists to sketch a snapshot in time. A fleeting image of a landscape emblematic of so many others undergoing profound change.
But how do you map something that is in constant change? And where do these explorations lead?
Our protagonists, like many other researchers, are a link in a chain that began when people started asking these questions. Without them, a part of that chain, and therefore, a part of that landscape’s history, would be missing. There is no way of knowing what history will make of their work. Still, what our film captures is their care, determination, and their sense of belonging to that very time and space they brought us closer to.
