Men Are Hungry Too

Die Knickerbocker-Bande is an Austrian television series.

A journey spanning 15 stadiums in Ultimo’s life. A childhood marked by a passion for music, the meteoric rise that took him from clubs to stadiums in no time, the hiatus caused by the pandemic, and a tour that seemed to be slipping away.

In Cuba, the nights are very dark indeed when there’s yet another power outage—but as much as possible, life goes on. People find their way around in the pitch dark, cyclists loom out of the blackness, children hang out on the streets by the light of flashlights. At the same time, the disruption appears to create intimacy: a priest takes the opportunity to open the Bible by candlelight and reads about the creation of light and darkness, an aged blind singer plays the guitar for his wife in their bedroom, a boy and his teacher play endless games of chess in the half-light, a fisherman heads calmly into the water with a lantern. Headlights from passing cars flash over houses shrouded in darkness, while the people inside sing and talk under the glow of portable lights.

How can a person change the world around them? Art is one of the most important tools that human beings have at their disposal to change thought, to move what seems to be sedimented and fixed. In IO|OI, with a play of exchanges and reflections, a person and their creation dance together. The work of art and its creator guide each other step by step, exchanging parts and leaving behind more questions than answers, one above all: are we the creation or the creator?

Every year thousands of people try to reach Europe by land, journeying on foot across the mountains, rivers and fields of the Balkan route connecting Asia to Europe. They face "the game": attempting repeatedly to cross borders trying to avoid being arrested and pushed back by border police. Go, friend, go spans across the ports of Patras in Greece, the forests by the border town of Šid in Serbia, the abandoned factories in the Bosnian Una Sana canton, and the arrival point in Trieste's public squares, all peripheral hotspots of migrant lives in transit. In bringing together different stories employing several narrative techniques, the film is an experiential journey made of observation, found footage and animation, and it aims to draw the viewer to feel the contrasting experience of resilience and resourceful hope that can be found in a context of destitution and violence.