Journey to the Sun at IDFA [17/11/2021]

Journey to the Sun (Kintop), the feature film by Ansgar Schaefer and Susana Dias premiered at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, 2021. It will be screened at the festival on the 20th, 22nd, 25th and 27th of November. And it's nominated for the Geluid IDFA ReFrame Award for best creative use of archival imagery.

Ansgar Schaefer is co-founder of the production company Kintop and is part of the team along with Elsa Sertório, Mario Espada and Susana de Souza dias, with whom he directed the film Journey to the Sun. Very focused on the Portuguese colonial wars and with extensive work on Portugal in the Second World War, Ansgar manages in this film to apply his studies and bring to the forefront the voices of Austrian children who were previously marginalized during the wars.

Susana de Sousa Dias brings to the film a particular perspective already worked on in other of her films, such as the feature documentaries, Natureza Morta (2005), 48 (2009), Obscure Light (2017) and her short film Fordlandia Malaise (2019). The material for some of the films are reports on photographs in historical moments where the repression and marginality of the characters studied is the central factor of the film study. These factors continue to be worked on in Journey to the Sun in a careful and accurate way.

This film retraces memories based on current reports from some of the Austrian children who boarded a ship heading to Portugal during the Second World War, and had to adapt here. This resonance between the current world brings another dimension to what we can consider a humanly crucial film in understanding the consequences for modern society.