Films by Nicolas Steiner

2015, 113 min
by Nicolas Steiner

Far, far away and out of sight, that’s where April, Dave, Cindy, Rick and the Godfather are creating life on their own terms. From the depths of the flood channels under Sin City, to a reclaimed military bunker in the middle of the dusty, heated Californian nowhere land to beyond the stratosphere where Mars now lives on earth. Each individual has been flung into periling circumstances on this rollercoaster ride called life. Through the hustle, pain, and laughter, we are whisked away to an unfamiliar world where we discover its inhabitants to be souls not unlike our very own.

Germany 2011, 70 min
by Nicolas Steiner

BATTLE OF THE QUEENS is a film from and about rural Europe capturing a timeless cultural event: a series of head-to-head fights of cows (not bulls) set in the valley in sunny Southern Switzerland, nestled amongst the Alps. The fights are sudden snorting seesaws, explosions of mass and muscle, archaic and wild. We follow three concurrend story lines: an anxious farmer with his beloved contender, a neurotic unemployed reporter from Zurich come to find a story and a gang of adolescent boys on mopeds trying to catch a pretty girl's eye. The festival is a balancing act between fascinating tradition and modernity. This black and white film serves as both an exciting visual treat and a long overdue documentation of a quaint Swiss tradition.