SAFARI

Director Ulrich Seidl turns a spotlight on African Safaris in this documentary, zooming in on white middle-class tourists hunting animals for fun. Building the film from his trademark eccentric tableaux and interviews, Seidl documents disturbing sequences on the hunt. Hunters from Germany and Austria drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. Then they shoot them, sob with excitement and pose in front of dead animal carcasses. Even the most tender father-son moments look sinister through Seidl’s lens, as an athletic Austrian couple in their early 40s hunt beautiful rare creatures with their teenage children; a local white rancher drinking himself into a stupor in a bird-watching hut and meticulous scenes of Namibian ranch-hands processing furs and heads for the tourists to take home as the trophies from the hunt.

Behind Safari's beautiful compositional tableaux and darkly humorous moments lies Seidl's core interest: an anthropological study of human nature. He brings us closer to the darkest depths of humanity than he ever has before.

ULRICH SEIDL

Ulrich Seidl (born 1952) is an Austrian producer, writer and director. He studied filmmaking at the Vienna Film Academy and went on to work in television. Seidl directed numerous award-winning documentaries such as Good News (1990), Animal Love (1995), Models (1998), Jesus, You Know (2003), Paradise Trilogy (2012). His first fiction feature, Dog Days (2001), won the Grand Jury Special Prize at the Venice Film Festival. 

His work methods, achieving the greatest possible authenticity and showing people in the most solitary and personal moments, has aroused intense debate. Several of his films often blend fiction and nonfiction.