MODERAT: THE LAST DAYS + TEN

Moderat: The Last Days

Elisa Mishto, Alexandre Powelz / Germany / 2022 / 20 min

Tenderness, humour and intelligent dance music. Get under the skin of the superstars of Moderat in this cinematic tour de force of a short film about friendship and insecurity.

After 10 years together on an exhausting world tour, Gernot, Sascha and Szary announced in 2017 a creative break from their joint project, the IDM/technopop band Moderat. Not sure if they would ever perform together again, they allowed themselves to be interviewed in a hotel room – separated from each other – and the extraordinarily intimate conversations are brought to life in the film with great artistic finesse. Black and white images of the musicians slowly manifest on the screen like watercolour paintings as we hear them describe each other, question the dominant image of masculinity in the music world and confide in us their fears, insecurities and dreams. It’s a film about friendship and the pain and beauty of making music together, and it all explodes into pure techno-catarsis at the end.

Ten

Dean Deblois / Iceland, United States / 2022 / 48 min

Of Monsters and Men is one of Iceland’s biggest export successes since Björk. Now they are celebrating their 10th anniversary with a musical and memorable road-trip in their homeland’s scenic surroundings.

After his mountainous film ‘Heima’ (2007) about Sigur Rós, Canadian director Dean DeBlois returns to Iceland, this time with folk-pop band Of Monsters and Men. With careful camerawork and the backdrop of Iceland’s magnificent scenery, he follows the quintet on a journey around the island where they perform intimate versions of their music in a number of peculiar places that have personal significance for the band members – including a lighthouse and a fishing boat. The occasion is their 10th anniversary, which should have sent the band out into the world. Instead, COVID-19 has stranded them in their homeland and so the band themselves – and the camera – are the only audience as they perform familiar, rare and new songs and share memories of their 10-year friendship and creative collaboration.