Angst

(Graça Castanheira, Portugal, 53 min.)

This journey begins at a dinner party in lethargic Portugal, Europe's oldest, sleepiest nation. Using Thoreau's Walden to illuminate the proceedings, filmmaker Graça Castanheira probes the underworld for civilization's petroleum lifeblood, examines the visual modes of modern industry and races through centuries of folly and Malthusian dread before posing her questions to the SETI scientists searching for signals from extraterrestrial life. Thoreau wrote that we have "settled down on earth and forgotten heaven," a warning that Castanheira mulls to astonishing effect. Shuffling unanticipated images of immense beauty against pressing existential query, Angst might be one of the most quietly grandiose experimental documentaries of the year.

—Douglas Vuncannon

Originally published in a slightly different form in The Independently Weekly's 2011 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival coverage.