Through a structuralist and simultaneously ambiguous form, the image’s reality treads closer to the abstract, leaving the sunset and trees behind. As we enter the image’s gloaming, it reveals its true eye: reality’s pure haptic energy, where there is nothing but sonorous light, and the dregs of the Unknown.

Vienna, 1920. The Austro-Hungarian Empire has collapsed. Peter Perg returns home from the Great War, after years of captivity. But the Vienna he comes home to is nothing like the place he once knew. The new Austrian Republic thrives on social and artistic freedom, but anti-democratic movements and unemployment loom overhead. A stranger in his hometown, his life takes a turn for the worse when one of his former comrades is murdered. Suddenly the mysterious killings of veterans are mounting. Personally connected to the victims, Perg decides to bring the killer to justice. He finds an ally in the cool-headed forensic doctor Theresa Körner, with whom he has a deeper, shared history. Their investigation leads them into the darkest corners of the city, as they confront a brutal and systematic killer and intrigues from within the police force. But when the killer’s net closes around Perg himself, he faces the moral dilemma of his life.

A young filmmaker returns to the village where she was born – a hamlet in the north of France – to investigate a strange story about a terrorist threat. She starts with members of her own family, and doesn’t have to go much further. The misunderstanding – as it turns out to be – shows above all how alarmist news items and political machinations in the cities can take on a life of their own, deep in the hinterland.

Without any international races held in 2020, Mathieu Blanchard takes on the challenge of crossing the Gaspé Peninsula over the hinterland. His goal is to run over 650km and 30,000m of elevation gain in a week from the Matapedia valley to the end of the world in Forillon. He will confront his physical and mental limits, while the uncertainty about his ability is greater than ever.​

The action takes place shortly after the end of the Second World War in the Siberian hinterland, among Russians and Germans with damaged personal stories and a strange transformation: the victors seem to be crawling into the skins of the defeated, and vice versa. Ignat, is the embodiment of the larger-than-life image of the Soviet victorious warrior who, in fact, proves to be shell-shocked, sick and broken, although not completely destroyed. Trains become fetish for the heroes of the film, and speed becomes a mania; they virtually become one with their steam engines, while the machines take on human names. The heroes set up an almost fatal race in the Siberian forest, risking their own lives and those of others.

Four friends from a sleepy little village in Punjab share a common dream: to go to England. Their problem is that they have neither the visa nor the ticket. A soldier alights from a train one day, and their lives change. He gives them a soldier’s promise: He will take them to the land of their dreams. What follows is a hilarious and heartwarming tale of a perilous journey through the desert and the sea, but most crucially through the hinterlands of their mind.

Ewald moved to Romania years ago. Now in his 40s, he seeks a fresh start. Leaving his girlfriend, he moves to the hinterland. With young boys from the area, he transforms a decaying school into a fortress. The children enjoy a new, carefree existence. But the distrust of the villagers is soon awoken. And Ewald is forced to confront a truth he has long suppressed. Sparta is the brother film to Rimini (2022), and the conclusion of Ulrich Seidl’s diptych about the inescapability of the past and the pain of finding yourself.

Punk’s Dead, the sequel to 1999 cult hit SLC Punk, is a punk romp through the Utah hinterlands. Ross, Penny and Crash, young outsiders from different tribes, embark on a road trip to a huge punk show. Ross, 19, is the love child of Trish and Heroin Bob, who died before Ross was born. During their odyssey, and with the help of a healthy dose of drugs, alcohol and punk music, Ross shreds his darkly Gothic outlook and embraces life. His mother Trish, who raised Ross alone in her steam punk shop, discovers that he is in a crisis. She recruits his ‘uncles,’ Bob’s old SLC gang, to help find him. When all collide at the concert, they are forced to deal with their unresolved relationships with Bob.

Sonja, a city girl from Zagreb, a vegetarian and a hardcore animal-rights activist, strongly opposes bullfighting in Dalmatinska zagora (Dalmatian Hinterland). People find this irritating and they conclude that no matter how passionately Sonja loves animals, she would never dare to stand in front of a bull. Bets are raised and Sonja faces a challenge in the form of Ante, known far and wide for his powers of persuasion.

Shot during the summer of 2005, this enigmatic film was the second collaboration between Saint Etienne and director Paul Kelly. It follows a young paperboy’s adventure across London’s last remaining wilderness in the Lea Valley on the eve of the Olympic development. A poetic ode to a metropolitan hinterland that has been forever changed by the impact of the 2012 Olympics games.

They should have stayed at home… When four friends head to the city for a Girl’s Night Out, an unexpected ride home turns into a night of murder and terror as they are stalked by three serial killers through the dense Australian hinterlands.

The lively João Grilo and the sly Chicó are poor guys living in the hinterland who cheat a bunch of people in a small Northeast Brazil town. But when they die, they have to be judged by Christ, the Devil and the Virgin Mary, before they are admitted to paradise.