'The find of the festival' was how Film Comment's European editor described Melbourne production The Ister, when it premiered at Rotterdam Film Festival.

Martin Heidegger became one of the most influential philosophers of the last century with his 1927 magnum opus, Being and Time. By 1933 Heidegger had embraced the Nazi 'revolution' but after clashing with their bureaucracy, rejected the ideology in 1934. In 1942, as the tide of the war was turning against Germany, Heidegger began a series of lectures on The Ister, a poem about the Danube River. Rather than an esoteric retreat into the world of poetry, Heidegger's lectures were a direct confrontation with the political, cultural and military chaos facing the world at the height of WWII. This epic documentary takes up some of the most challenging paths in Heidegger's thought, on a journey from the mouth of the Danube, winding through the shattered remains of the former Yugoslavia and finally to Germany, both the heart of the new Europe and the ghost of the old one. The film invites the viewer to participate in some of the most provocative issues facing the world today: home and place, culture and memory, technology and ecology, politics and war.

David Barison and Daniel Ross are guests of the Festival.

D/P/S David Barison, Daniel Ross WS Black Box Sound and Image L English, French, Croatian, German w/English subtitles TD Video/Col/2004/189mins

David Barison was born in Melbourne in 1972. Films: The Ister (MIFF 2004).Daniel Ross' films: The Ister (MIFF 2004).