Zero

Using as a starting point the famous remark "If bees disappeared off the face of the Earth, humankind would only have four years left to live," director Gyula Nemes reflects in his film on the future of our ecosystem. His distinctive take on the fight against globalisation, on ecological utopias and inevitable natural disasters is conveyed via four different genres. He adopts a burlesque approach to introduce us to the former boss of an artificial honey factory turned passionate forest beekeeper. Then follows a melodramatic story of apian love: action sequences illustrate the advance of unconventional guerrilla warfare, whose termination sees mankind returning to candlelight and horse-drawn modes of transport. The African road movie which frames the entire film is conceived as the fata morgana of a devastated yet resolute human soul. The director's genre collage and his experiments with black-and-white and colour material, comic-strip inserts and soundtrack make for an intellectually wholesome and immensely witty film. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)