2017, documentary film, Germany/Indonesia, 27 min, Indonesian dialogues with German or English subtitles; director and camera: Florian Kunert; sounddesign: Stefan Voglsinger; assistant director: Andrangs Oetjoe; editing: Florian Kunert, Ian Purnell, Lara Rodriguez; music: Stefan Galler, The Strangers; soundmixing: Gastón Saenz; supervision: Prof. Frank Döhmann; production: Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln and Florian Kunert, Highway Spirit

For some people, octopuses are already brothers. Among the sea nomads of Indonesia, every newborn has an octopus as a twin brother. Rituals are carried out to appease the brother in the water and prevent misfortunes. When dishonor occurs, Jakarta is portrayed as the apocalyptic revenge of the brother octopus.
Florian Kunert traces the relationship of a group of nomads with octopuses, paradoxical at times as it seems to be the case everywhere in the world, through a hybrid film that is documentary in its aim, yet deeply personal in its approach — an empirical meditation on relating. The subjective camera work and its close and intimate observations draw its audience into the relationships of its protagonists, both animal and human. Yet precisely by the surrender of an ideal of impartial objectivity, he sees eye to eye with his hosts above and under water, allowing us to be touched by their perspective. By surrendering the broken ideal of impartiality, Kunert writes us into his film.
The further we thus delve into the world as the nomads know it, the further our own knowledge allows itself to be recalibrated. Who, then, do we meet, in the nomad’s brother octopus? What octopuses do we recognize, when we perceive and understand them through the knowledge of the Sama-Bajau? What do we see, when we live with octopuses in our family?

Florian Kunert is a media artist and film director, who lives in Cologne. His work sits at the intersection of fine arts and hybrid filmmaking, drawing on methods of reenactment that blend documentary and fiction features. As part of making Oh Brother Octopus, he lived and worked in Indonesia for one year. It premiered in the Berlinale Shorts Program in 2017 and won the German Short Film Prize. His first feature graduating film at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Fortschritt im Tal der Ahnungslosen (2016-2019), premiered in the Forum section of the Berlinale and 2019 won again the German Short Film prize. — www.floriankunert.com