Films by Sebastian Mez

Germany 2021, 86 min
by Sebastian Mez

On a mysterious crackling magnetic tape, a 'viewer' discovers shaky, low-definition images, which seem to have been shot during a moon landing. It is as if we had just landed on another planet, the deserted landscapes of which, seem nonetheless familiar to us and encircled by a worrying strangeness. Traces of the past remain: rusty machines, pylons, human artefacts that multiply as the cameraman approaches what were towns, now plunged into absolute and silent desolation. Composing a series of magnificently framed scenes, emptied of all living presence, the film observes without blinking the agony of our civilisation. No more, no less.

Germany 2012, 84 min
by Sebastian Mez

Settled somewhere in nowhere in the South Ural region in Russia, the film tells the story of people living in one of the most radioactive contaminated spots on earth. Unknown to a wide public, this region was repeatedly irradiated by different accident of the nuclear facility MAYAK, which was the first plant for the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union and which is still in operation. Rather than an investigative flick, the filmmakers attemp is to find a cinematic translation for a danger that is not perceptible nor visual and to capture the strenght of people and nature who has to cope with it.