On April 30, 2021 Frontex carried out the first test flight of the Heron 1 – a military surveillance drone stationed on the Mediterranean island of Malta. The continued effort towards an autonomous and militarised European border is engulfed in mystery and lack of information. A failed endeavour to track the medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, relocates the filmmaker inside a digital glitch – somewhere between Frontex, the military industrial complex and a local plane spotter community.
A generic email activates a horizontal gaze to reconnoiter the seemingly invisible infrastructure surrounding the surveillance drone. As the island of rapid growth slowly turns into an industrial complex, the film gazes into the abyss of abandoned limestone quarries, unfolding a triptych of an expanding bureaucratic and militarised society. What does the accelerated technological development at the European borders actually look like?
2020
Language: English, Maltese
Video, 28:57min, Color,
Written and Directed by Stefan Kruse
Camera: Asbjørn Derdau
Sound design & composer: Asbjørn Derdau
Art Director: Mads Sandholm
Colorgrading: Fabiana Cardalda
Festivals
04/25 Visions Du Réel - International Medium Lenght & Short Film Competition (World Premiere)
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