A young taxidermist is fascinated by crows, paying considerate attention to their dead bodies. Her work on the birds is simultaneously a careful study of anatomical connections and a kind of service toward the resurrection of this mythical creature from the realm between life and death. Through detailed, pulsating black-and-white images and a sparingly intense soundtrack, a charged atmosphere unfolds between craftsmanship, imagination and poetry.

Inspired by the course of the Danube, the European river par excellence, this film drifts from the source to the delta, from the forest of origins to the sea of arrival, both black by name. The water keeps flowing, seasons pass, borders move past and languages change. The images and sounds are the results of a poetic and meditative work which abandons itself to the river’s speed and rhythm. Via encounters and reports, dialects and philosophies, people and landscapes, the grand narrative of a fragmented, torn Europe emerges. But it’s here precisely, along the Danube, that this continent is also marked by the wealth of intertwined cultures.

An added title like a lead weight. Four words from Ingeborg Bachmann’s novel “Malina” set the tone: “There is always war.” Who could ever accept this?! And who hasn’t long since come to terms with it?! “Tremor” is a harsh film in vibrating black-and-white images and a choir of voices from offscreen, as compelling as it is implacable. This continuing meditation on great brutalities, small impositions and omnipresent conflicts takes us to task. But it releases us not into short-lived outrage but into lasting rage. At the end an Afropop song by Jupiter & Okwess International: a song about crying and suffering – and fighting.