Florian Fischer and Johannes Krell construct a meditative triptych interweaving ecological change, geological time, and ancient ritual. Three episodes unfold: coniferous forests devastated by beetle infestations, ancient tree fossils preserved in volcanic ash, and a luminous unknown being performing within a Neolithic site designed around solar cycles. Without dialogue or narration, the film uses poetic imagery and dense sound to sensually capture temporal cycles and transformation, revealing fragile continuities between human and nonhuman worlds, memory and forgetting, life and extinction.

*This film will be screened as a three-channel installation titled Passages in the Non-Theatrical Program, Face of Nature — View Film Information

Gray clouds settle softly over the river. Light filters through countless insect-bored holes into the heart of a tree. The forest becomes a cradle for future life. Les Rites de Passage is a journey through 300 million years of ecology and myth—a brief yet potent distillation of the vast cycles of creation and extinction. Composed of luminous, wordless imagery, the film is as much about our ecological and geological history as it is about our spiritual heritage. 

Directors Florian Fischer and Johannes Krell deftly interlace multiple narratives that share a single space and time: river rituals and ghostly dances; the living and the inanimate; the human and the nonhuman; the ecological and the supernatural. Transcending a conventional understanding of evolution, the film guides us on a mythic voyage.

Since 2013, we have collaborated on artistic films blending experimental and documentary elements. In our “Natures” trilogy (Still Life, Kaltes Tal, Umbra), the Harz region and the Brocken mountain served as myth-laden sites. Climate change, monoculture, and bark beetle infestation have transformed the once-familiar forest into a dystopian landscape. Our work responds by imagining nonhuman perspectives, like that of a tree, to question anthropocentric hierarchies and explore geological time beyond human history.

• ProducerStefan Helmut BEIER, Ray Peter MALETZKI
• Screenplay Johannes KRELL, Florian FISCHER
• Cinematography Johannes KRELL, Florian FISCHER
• Edit Johannes KRELL, Florian FISCHER
• Sound Johannes KRELL
• Cast Malin-valerie SCHMIDT