THE LANDSCAPE AND THE FURY: PRESS
︎︎︎ Back
"Big, Bold and Breathtaking. [...] There’s something redoubtable and studied about the film in its bridging the sweep and scale with a minute, granular sensory experience. As intensive and carefully considered every element of the aural design is, it rarely feels trapped within its formal edifice. Despite sticking to a muted form of utterance, "The Landscape and the Fury" has a gigantic, enormous scope of inquiry that unspools as being boundlessly alive to the tiniest flickering sensory moment."
High on Films, 04/2024
"Vögele manages to make her calm, quiet and painterly film, with its slowly swaying trees on rolling hillsides, a landscape bathed in sunlight or covered in snow, cry out loud and clear about the importance of small acts of humanity, in all places and under all circumstances. And maybe that is the fury this landscape of Bosnia, of Europe, really needs."
Business Doc Europe, 04/2024
"This documentary represents everything that makes a cinema experience unique and lasting. […] I come out of the cinema and have rearranged something inside me, reorganised it, perhaps even understood something that I already knew beforehand."
Sennhauser Filmblog (CH) 04/2024
"The Balkan landscape is a witness to cycles of time and displacement in Nicole Vögele’s atmospheric, compelling and very human doc.[…] Emotions, objects and the earth enter into a kind of dialogue, in a reflection on the interconnected and eternally repeating state of humans between belonging and being lost."
The Film Verdict (IT), 04/2024
"Vögele’s film is a quiet, patient observation of what is, rather than of what should be. It is a portrait of humanity, of the human in people who have more in common than which divides them. It is an observation of solidarity between those who know, those who endured and survived, an observation of the hand-in-hand relationship of past and present, of history and history-in-the-making. The Landscape and the Fury is a deeply human portrait of life at a border, which doesn’t divide but brings together."
The arts of slow cinema (FR), 04/2024
"The film’s 138 minutes fly by, leaving the audience with a strange sensation, as if they’ve just experienced something wonderful but also frighteningly straightforward. [...] Between resignation in the face of a kind of human cruelty which is incredibly hard to understand and hope born out of the capacity of those living in this border zone to feel empathy with people who are simply looking to survive, as was once the case for them, the film captures emotions and sensations which could easily have evaporated without anyone ever noticing them."
Cineeurope, 04/2024
"The Landscape and the Fury" uses a border space to reflect the contrasts between the past and the present, between those who have a home and those who are looking for a home, forming a human landscape wrapped in the rhythms of the natural landscape."
En Primera Fila (ES), 04/2024
"The jury was impressed by the approach of a film that painstakingly portrays the complexity of reality, allowing the viewer to question their place in the world. This film journeys through the past with its mines, scars of war, and explores the present of a region where people intersect and bond in wandering and dignity."
Jury Visions du Réel: Carlo Chatrian, Dora Bouchoucha and Carmen Jacquier, 04/2024
"The Landscape and the Fury" is a film about time: The seasons certainly pass on screen, but it is above all the conflicts of today that are superimposed on those of yesterday, in the haunted places where the filmmaker's camera lingers. [...] In the film, bone-chilling screams in the dead of night end up being swallowed by the darkness. ‘Is he still following us?’ worries a woman without knowing precisely what threat it is. What is it, decade after decade, that pursues the survivors of yesterday and the fugitives of today?"
Le Polyester (FR), 04/2024
"A slow progression into the heart of the darkness of exile."
24 Heures (CH), 04/2024
"A powerful and touching movie which isn’t afraid to drill down into the complex nature of reality in order to convey its contradictions and lyricism. [...] A film which unfolds as we go along, with enormous strength, ambition and precision."
Émilie Bujès, Artistic Director Visions du Réel (CH), 04/2024
"Violence that inscribes itself into the landscape without even a mushroom twitching its lamella. ‘The Landscape and the Fury’ is an enlightening sensory experience. [...] The indifferent landscapes in the film remind us how senseless borders and how absurd wars are.
[...] " The Landscape and the Fury" does not explain anything, but leaves the images, which are meaningful precisely because of their ambiguity, to the effect of time and our own reflection and empathy. Rarely does a Swiss film manage to say so much with so little."
WOZ (CH), 04/2024
"In Nicole Vogele’s sombre, atmospheric and immersive documentary, the fragility of everyday life in this area is challenged by the arrival of refugees fleeing horrors that are all too familiar to the people here. This shared experience fosters a bond of compassion that lies at the heart of a restrained but rewarding film. [...] Vögele puts her trust in the viewer to ask questions, think deeply and learn from the bigger truths revealed in snatches of conversations, anguished cries in the dark and random acts of kindness."
Screendaily (US), 04/2024
"A philosophical and highly cinematographic dimension is reached in ‘ The Landscape and the Fury’, which was awarded the Grand Jury Prize - chaired by the former Berlinale director Carlo Chatrian. Already the title transforms topography into a topology saturated with meaning. In images, protagonists and a wordless level of abstraction, Swiss director Nicole Vögele has created an impressive essay on migration and war. [...] In the images of hopelessness, the history, in the combination of landscape and fury, communicates itself directly and in close proximity to the universally observed humans. There is no other way to put it: Nicole Vögele has created a tragic sensation with ‘The Landscape and the Fury’."
Artechock (DE), 04/2024
"The aesthetic decisions make it possible to cope with complexity and simultaneity. Zooming in on the details harbours a poetry that inspires reflection. Those who ask questions find answers. If you look longer, you see more, you understand - even the incomprehensible. Vögele's film can be read as a commentary on the increasingly violent images of theatres of war that are circulating in the news and on social media. As a journalist, she knows how important original footage is. But perhaps that's why her film entices jaded eyes into keen observation, doesn't shock and thus only gets more under the skin."
Filmexplorer (CH), 05/2024
"The film reveals the deep trauma and complex human nature hidden beneath the surface. Through the film, we not only see the dual face of nature, but also trigger a deep reflection on borders, globalization and human destiny.
Time is slowly moving forward and although mines exist, they may lose their effectiveness. The trauma of the past may heal very slowly, but these traumas always exist. Although they will not erupt directly or suddenly, they still remain on this land like scars."
Bendi News China (CN), 07/2024
"Across 138 mesmerizing minutes, Vögele forges a rich sensory experience through imagistic sequences that unfold at an intentional, unhurried pace. Steam rises from a lone figure trekking through mist; trees gently sway while deeper meanings linger in the gaps between. With this borderland as a backdrop, the film breathes life into landscapes scarred by conflict and navigates the ties between humanity and place, past and present, those who have homes and those forever searching. [...] Vögele finds parallels in these chance encounters between those putting down roots and others uprooted. Flight from war, poverty, or instability unites strangers across vast distances. Her vision underscores our shared vulnerability and capacity for empathy - if only we opened our eyes to understand those different from ourselves. Through her subtle, profound storytelling, borders dissolve, and we see our shared stake in humanity."
Gazettely (US), 07/2024