Credits: screenplay: Wolfgang Widerhofer, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Maria Arlamovsky; director of photography: Nikolaus Geyrhalter; editor: Wolfgang Widerhofer; sound: Lea Saby, Hjalti Bager-Jonathansson, Andreas Hamza, Lenka Mikulova, Nicolas Joly, Ekkehard Baumung; producer: Michael Kitzberger; production: Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion;

Country: Austria

Year: 2011

Running time: 88

Colour: Colour

Format: 35 mm

A film poem about a continent at night, a culture on which the sun's going down, though it's hyper alert at the same time, an “Abendland” that, often somewhat self-obsessively, sees itself as the crown of human civilization, while its service economy is undergoing rapid growth in a thoroughly pragmatic way. Nikolaus Geyrhalter takes a look at a paradise with a quite diverse understanding of protection. Night work juxtaposed with oblivious evening digression, birth and death, questions that await answers in the semi-darkness, a Babel of languages, the routine of the daily news, and political negotiation: All this has been captured in images with a wealth of details that make us look at things in a new way. The longer you consider a word, the more distant is its return gaze: ABENDLAND.