Snowboarder Elias Elhardt presents his new movie
A film about a small ski town becoming a place of encounter in an area defined by war.
Just a few months after the successful premiere of Elias Elhardt’s masterpiece „Contraddiction“, the snowboarder and filmmaker now presents his latest short-film NARCIS. Again he combines his two passions – Snowboarding and filmmaking – and explores the war-torn Kosovo region. Elias introduces you to Brezovica, a small mountain town, where ethnical conflicts give way to the shared passion for winter sports and the diversity of its community. To tell this story, Elias joined forces with friend and filmmaker Alex Tank and together they spent several weeks in the area.
NARCIS - Trailer from Elias Elhardt on Vimeo.
ABOUT NARCIS
In the midst of Kosovo, an area that’s haunted by war and ethnical conflicts, Elias Elhardt discovers the small winter sport resort Brezovica. With several abandoned hotels and lifts, time has seemingly stopped here since Yugoslavia’s breakdown over 20 years ago. Snowboard enthusiast Hamdi is one of the locals, who now want to breathe new life into this special place and share the passion for winter sport with the coming generations. He guides Elias through this forgotten world and reflects on the question, how a future can be built if the past still weighs so heavily.
Elias Elhardt says about NARCIS: „With the rise of nationalism across Europe, I wanted to make a film exploring how the division of countries and ethnicities draws communities apart and if a common passion for winter sports can serve as a platform to bring people together. With that idea in mind I travelled to the Balkan Mountains in Eastern Europe and discovered the perfect place and community to tell this story. The small winter sport town Brezovica in Kosovo, that was once a prospering resort before Yugoslavia fell apart during the Kosovo war and the dispute between Serbs and Kosovo-Albanians. This on-going conflict has blocked the town development largely for the past 20 years, but now there is a new generation of young winter sport enthusiasts from different backgrounds coming together, willing to rebuild this place together in the hopes for a better future.“ The film was shown at selected film festivals already, like the St. Anton Filmfest or the Banff Film-Festival, one of the most prestigious mountain sports film festivals.
PREMIERES
The movie will be shown next month in Innsbruck and Munich. Next to the movie guests have the chance to check out a photo exhibition of Carlos Blanchard, who captures his impressions of the trip. Elias Elhardt and his two main protagonists Hamdi Hisari, a local guide and snowboarder, as well as German Benjamin Mohr, who works as expert for rural development on behalf of the German government in the area, will all be available for an open discussion round to give interesting insights into the country and their lifes.
Stops:
November 14th, 2019, Innsbruck/AUT, Leo Kino:
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November 15th, 2019, Munich/GER, Bahnwärter Thiel:
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Film Credits:
Written & produced: Elias Elhardt
Directed: Alexander Tank & Elias Elhardt
Starring: Hamdi Hisari, Elias Elhardt, Benjamin Mohr, Alexander Tank