TWO GIANTS THAT EXIST HERE – A GERMAN FAIRYTALE

A ghost haunts Europe and much of the rest of the world. It is not about communism this time, but quite the opposite instead. Different types of excluding nationalism, extreme right-wing politics and climatic denialism are extending all over due to unprecedented media manipulation and bias. Gianna Scholten's short film deconstructs, through wit and reappropriation of references, the extreme right ideology becoming more frequent in today's Germany. Through reformulation of myths associated with ultranationalist arcadia – mostly the Grimm Brothers stories and the bucolic landscapes of the Rhineland – Scholten creates a powerful militant device, which at the same time turns to be a hilarious comedy on two youngsters, their dubiously reliable grandmother and some media leaders of debased speeches and ill-advised ideas – some of them expressed on the soundtrack. By crossing documentary and fictional strategies, together with virtuously mixed archival material, digital effects and analog supports, this short film becomes a most powerful, imaginative and playful criticism -in young German cinema- of the current spread in societies in their processes of ideological decomposition and lobotomization. It all comes to, as the film's title suggests, a reality that can no longer be ignored. GABRIEL DOMÉNECH