Product Description

{First Prize, 1999 Munich Documentary Festival}

{Planete Prize, 1998 Vues sur les Docs (France)}

{1998 Nordic Documentary Award, Nordic Panorama (Sweden)}

Before 'Winged Migration,' there was KESTREL'S EYE, the award-winning film that, unlike any other, plunges viewers into the world of nature, unobtrusively capturing the life of a family of kestrels (European falcons) who live in an old church tower above a small town in Sweden. Nominated for a Swedish Oscar and a multiple prize winner at documentary film festivals around the world, this feature documentary "captures reality with fidelity and intimacy that prompts old-fashioned wonder." (New York Times)

Swedish filmmaker Mikael Kristersson patiently followed the kestrels' progress for several years with special techniques and hidden cameras that gave him intimate access to their secluded nest. With vivid cinematography, and filmed from a bird's eye view, KESTREL'S EYE enters the time and space of the kestrels to show how they hunt, feed and hatch their young. With only the real sounds of the birds and their surroundings as a soundtrack, we hear how the kestrels communicate with each other as they beg for food, learn to fly, or the mother receives a juicy mouse from her beau. Letting the birds' actions speak for themselves, their lives are clearly understood and felt, in contrast to the obscure movements of the humans seen distantly in the churchyard below.

Review

In what could be a textbook on how to construct a story without plot or dialogue, Kristersson pieces together a cohesive narrative about two animals' quest for survival and proliferation in an indifferent world. --Variety

A fascinating meditation set to the cooing and clicking of these extraordinary creatures as they share their field mice, ruffle their feathers, engage in fly-by lovemaking, warm their eggs, and overlook the comings and goings of homo sapiens in the churchyard below. --New York Magazine

A triumph of ingenious cinematography and remarkable patience. You've never seen a movie quite like this! --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette