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Oliver Laxe

Director
Oliver Laxe is a Spanish-French director, screenwriter, and actor who has established himself as one of the most distinctive voices in European auteur cinema with his poetic, spiritual, and nature-loving films. His work is characterized by extraordinary visual power and profound themes that raise questions about faith, humanity, and our relationship with nature. Laxe achieved his international breakthrough with FIRE WILL COME (2019). The film, which was shot in Galicia and won an award in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, tells the story of a man who returns to his home village after serving a prison sentence – only to be confronted once again with destruction and suspicion. The haunting images of the Galician landscape and the authentic staging made the work one of the most acclaimed European films of the year. Laxe had already caused a stir with Mimosas (2016), a mystical desert adventure that won the Grand Prix at Cannes' Semaine de la Critique. His debut Todos vós sodes capitáns (2010) won the FIPRESCI Prize in the same series and established his reputation as a visionary filmmaker who moves between documentary and fiction. With his more recent work Sirāt (2025), Laxe returns once again to existential questions, remaining true to his introspective style. Oliver Laxe stands for a cinema of contemplation, in which silence, spirituality, and the relationship between humans and their environment play central roles. His films have won numerous awards at international festivals and have secured him a firm place in modern European cinema.

Films

Fire Will Come

Fire Will Come

By Oliver Laxe

2019 | 86 min | Drama

The strange loner Amador was blamed for a devastating forest fire. After serving his prison sentence, he is now no longer welcome in his village.

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The Ground Beneath Their Feet

The Ground Beneath Their Feet

2007 | 20 min | Drama

Frido and his daughter Lisa live in one of the West German villages affected by the relocation efforts due to coal mining expansion in the region. The last family living in the deserted village, they will have to move soon. However, Frido is living in complete denial, clinging on to his home and the way life used to be for him there. Instead of planning the inevitable move, he redoes his front yard and puts a fresh coat of paint on his house that is inevitably to fall victim to the huge excavators ...

Points of Light

Points of Light

2024 | 27 min | Documentary

Not long ago, countless fireflies swarmed through fields and backyards on summer nights. Today in Iowa, a place known for its uniform landscape and monocultures of corn, fireflies are increasingly rare to find: points of light that blink off just as quickly as they light up in the dark. In POINTS OF LIGHT, filmmaker Annika Juliane Schilling sets out to search for these magical-seeming insects and the reasons for their disappearance. She takes a look at farm work and front lawns, as patterns of ...

Alimamy

Alimamy

2020 | 40 min | Documentary

Alimamy and his family have lived for generations in a small village with about 150 inhabitants that has also had its own school for a few years. Like most people in Sierra Leone, he lives from agriculture. He grows cassava which he processes and sells as so-called Garie flour. He is very proud of his "Kasseh Garie." "With this film, we have tried to break with the usual images of Africa and offer personal insights into the lives of the generation doing the hard work of social and political change ...

The Dust of Modern Life

The Dust of Modern Life

2021 | 81 min | Documentary

Liêm is a member of the Sedang, an ethnic minority group in Vietnam. Following tradition, he and other men go into the jungle for a spiritual cleansing, subsisting only on what the forest offers them. In the past, when he made the trip with his father, they fed on wild animals, such as monkeys, wild cats, or deer. Nowadays, deforestation has driven these animals away, and so Liêm is forced to catch rats and frogs, which the group (and film crew) consume. "The Vietnamese jungle is changing, and ...

Metamorphoses

Metamorphoses

2013 | 84 min | Documentary

As a result of several accidents at the Mayak nuclear facility, which has been operating for almost 60 years in isolation from the outside world, the surrounding regions and their inhabitants have been repeatedly contaminated with radiation. The people in the affected areas, live as if in a forgotten world. The film tells the stories of the people who live and survive in it. Originally, student director Sebastian Mez wanted to make a film about the reactor accident in Fukushima, but during his research ...

For the love of survival

For the love of survival

2019 | 86 min | Documentary

Meet eight courageous people who renounce agricultural conventions and farm without poisons and without destroying the environment. Listen to their stories of having to wear protective suits in the fields, of the importance of earthworms and cow horns, of silence, of wallowing pigs and of reverence for life... Experience the outstanding courage of these farmers to trust their own instincts and create a new form of agricultural. The resistance they bump up against just makes them stronger.

Feldarbeit

Feldarbeit

2012 | 39 min | Documentary

In calm and exploring images between the poles of documentary and fiction, Henrike Meyer is reaching out, looking for some kind of reconciliation. The filmmaker accompanies her father during the harvest, an exhausting time that leaves little or no room for any form of familiar daily routine. This makes FELDARBEIT an actual portrait of fieldwork. Henrike Meyer’s intimate perspective of an outsider gives an insight into the workings of a large agricultural firm that employs seasonal workers. The German ...

The Postman's White Nights

The Postman's White Nights

2014 | 97 min | Drama

Gentle vignettes from a remote northern Russian village on the shores of Lake Kenozero tell the story of its postman, who is the village's only lifeline to the outside world. In the shadow of the nearby spaceport, the villagers live off their pensions and become addicted to vodka under the yoke of the mayoress. When the postman Aleksey's outboard motor is stolen, the village is cut off from the outside world. Director Andrei Konchalovsky, with a cast of mostly amateur actors, illustrates the divide ...

Winter

Winter

2014 | 29 min | Documentary

Landscapes change and people change with them. This happens over centuries and decades, but sometimes also in the fleeting moment of transition from night to day. Then everything changes and nothing remains as it was. "The snow hid everything beneath itself, until people finally forgot." Director Martin Prinoth (DIE GESCHÖPFE DES VESUV), born in Bolzano, is a graduate of the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. He is a member of the German-Italian artist collective YOVO! YOVO! and co-founder ...

Kumru

Kumru

2020 | 43 min | Drama

In a remote mountain village where the main form of communication is an ancient whistled language, lives a 12-year-old boy who does not know how to speak the language. Berat is an outsider, but his connection to a mysterious hybrid creature – half sheep, half dog – leads him on an unusual journey. The sick creature urgently needs medicine, and Berat does everything he can to get it. At the same time, the hybrid teaches him another, equally fascinating form of communication that creates a magical ...