Day of the Sparrow

"Day of the Sparrow" is a political nature film. It is about a land in which
the borderline between war and peace disappears. On 14 November 2005
a sparrow is shot in Leeuwarden, Netherlands; in Kabul a German soldier
dies in a suicide attack. The juxtaposition of the headlines provides director
Philip Scheffner with the occasion to set out in search of the war with the
methods of ornithology. In Germany, not in Afghanistan.

His journey through Germany begins at the Baltic Sea, with childhood
memories of a bird sanctuary between a military training area and a sailboat
marina. From place to place the camera circles around the reality of
war, in images of seeming peace. Dialogues from accidental encounters
float through the deserted countryside. The birds remain constantly in the
focus of the camera. They sit in cannon barrels, on fences, flatter about over
meadows and fields, mark the places where this war is carried out.
And suddenly the perspective shifts. A friend of the filmmaker is arrested on
a country road in Brandenburg. The bird watchers themselves are now the
object of observation.

What remains is an unusual view of a familiar scene: a military training area
between a bird sanctuary and a sailboat marina. Hurtling missiles whip up
the turquoise-coloured water, above which the birds continue their flight
unheeded.

Philip Scheffner: "With ′Day of the Sparrow′ I want to create a cinematic
space between image and sound, between analysis and imagination, that
puts into question the seeming matter-of-factness of the current war."

Source: 60. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)