In a near food-apocalyptic reality on Earth, humans have gone extinct. Traces of the built environment evince their former existence in a visually striking opening sequence. Haunted and eerie, the world of Hungry is, in fact, inhabited only by insects, plants, and stones. The void it leaves behind feels strangely cathartic, especially when seen from the vantage point of today.
The imagery of Hungry resembles a kind of game-over moment before the closing credits, carrying the weight of rushed abandonment and the slow passage of time. There is something oddly soothing in skimming directly to the point of human hubris, bypassing the drama of collapse altogether.
However calming and mesmerizing, Hungry unfolds along a humorous yet unsettling narrative path, tracing chains of cause and effect within the climate crisis. The peaceful footage of a humanless Earth is periodically interrupted by the voices of scientists, speaking from the past (our present) about the future implications of the global food market. Amid quantitative analysis and explanatory frameworks, Austrian director Susanne Brandstaetter adopts a playful tone, subtly deconstructing the medium itself by separating image from sound and science from speculation. The result is a climate-crisis narrative that operates through both imagination and fact, finding its logic in the absurdity of humankind’s tenure on Earth.
In light of Hungry’s world premiere at the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam, Susanne Brandstaetter shared insights into the making of her curious sci-fi documentary.
Your film departs from a more common climate narrative that emphasizes individual responsibility and human impact, instead imagining a science-fiction scenario of human extinction driven by corporate power. How did this conceptual shift, and specifically the turn toward science fiction, emerge for you?
It was a very long process. I have been researching the food market since 2016. Originally, I was reading studies on food supplements. They all seemed one-sided, pushing a specific product each time. I soon realized that these were paid-for studies, used as scientific studies ultimately advertising products. This set me off in a slightly different direction, into all the industrial ties and the corporations behind, which led me to look at how these specific industries were moving into other sectors, and how this was also influencing the health of our environment and our health. I ended up conducting research in all different directions. In the end, I was trying to figure out how I could tell the story of cause and effect in an effective, perceivable way, through tracing the root of the whole problem. But it was at an early point, around the end of the script development stage, that I hit upon the idea of using a science fiction approach to examine what happened.
The film is primarily led by the audio, composed of interviews with scientists. Between the voices of scientists there is a narrator (called Being) commenting on what is said. How much of it is fictional and how much of the shared information is based on the actual research?
Every single interview is with a real scientist and expert, and they are not scripted. I didn’t want to influence what they would say, so I hardly told them anything in advance, besides the concept of taking place in the future. The interviews took us into all different areas. We did all of these recordings remotely. It fit the concept of the film, and at the same time it also supported the idea of green filming, which was also important to me. Later on, since I was mainly interested in the concept of cause and effect, this is how I developed and refined the workflow of the interviews.
However, in respect to the science fiction and the character of the Being, I felt that I needed this extra layer. I wanted the audience to reflect more, and the role of the Being is to facilitate this, as it has a different point of view than what the scientists are saying. The Being is self-reflective and has its own character, this kind of sarcastic or cynical bit of humour. I wanted the narrating Being to have its own character, so I developed the character of the Being much like you would develop a fictional character for any movie. I worked on that character over a long period of time, and I wrote those lines the character says. This part is scripted.
This is a creative formal move for documentary, adding a commenting character and working with highly evocative imagery. How has your previous experience as a filmmaker brought you to this point, and enabled you to make a documentary with this science-fiction twist?
I have not worked in fiction in the past. I’m a documentary filmmaker. However, I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction. I read science fiction from my youth onward, and I especially appreciate science fiction that is grounded in research and in science.
I’ve never made a film like this before. I always wanted to use more unconventional forms, but in the funding system that we have (which in Austria is excellent) sometimes you have a great idea, and it still doesn’t get funded. Some of those ideas with unusual approaches were not made, unfortunately. But this film convinced the juries immediately. I was very fortunate that I got support and funding for this film.
All the images in the film are devoid of humans, yet they are original footage. How did you find these landscapes, and how did you achieve such an empty, human-free image?
A lot of research was not only for the background information or reaching out to the scientists, but also for finding all the locations. First, I did a huge amount of research online, for instance, things that people had posted on YouTube (nowadays you can really access a lot of photo and film material). A lot of the things that I found were no longer interesting, as it turned out. They had actually completely changed from the shooting time, or they were being renovated, or they were not as interesting as they seemed. So I also had to use location scouts before we even started shooting. But from that point, I moved forward in defining what my concept really looks like. Finally, I could find the locations that I thought would work in Austria, Germany, Spain, in the U.S., and in Malaysia.
So the film has real locations. Not all of these locations were really abandoned, but were depopulated in a way, and some derelict. We were really looking to get the shot where no one was in it, no birds flying through, or airplanes, or cars, or people walking through. But of course, you can’t always control that. Sometimes we had really great shots and there were fresh tire tracks that we hadn’t noticed. There’s so many things like that. This was all done with the traditional VFX method of removing frame by frame. We only wanted insects left. The possibilities of using AI have now exploded tremendously, but we didn’t have those.
You give us a very specific idea of what the future could look like, which I find fascinating. Somehow, hunger is the connecting thread, food and nutrition. From the start of the research to the finalization of the film, did you find any surprises?
It was a never-ending process of finding surprises. I love researching. I started with that very first idea, and I had no idea where it was going to take me.
Fortunately, I had the support to actually have all this time to be doing research, since I had funding for the script development. Through the research I was finding just the most astonishing things. I was talking to scientists, who were telling me these things and passing me on to other scientists that I could talk to as well. So the story built little by little and developed over the process of the whole period of the script development.
Even after this phase, I continued researching. During the project development, the research went on and I was still connecting with scientists and experts and I was open to where it was going to be taking me. My goal was to find out, where the actual root of the problems that we’re having, is. I had this feeling that all of this was very interconnected and I was building this whole chain of cause and effect through research.
I was working with a mind map. Of course, I had to take some dots out to serve an appropriate length for the film.
Some of the facts and arguments are very explicit and spot on, which also means that they are at points hard to process and sit with. Perhaps it’s overwhelming for an individual viewer. Who do you hope would watch this film? Who do you think might get this striking effect after following the film?
I am hoping that a lot of people will see it. The very first step is to inform people, because I think that it’s very important for all of us to know the danger posed by the big transnational companies that keep merging. This is enormous and it is affecting all of us.
A lot of people already don’t have such a positive attitude toward corporations. But I think they don’t realize up to what point those corporations are actually making important decisions or influencing the legislators and lawmakers and politicians to only be making decisions that are in favor of their business. They supersede elected governments, and they are influencing our personal lives, the health of our planet, and everything around us. We all have a voice, but we can only make ourselves be heard if we know about this first. So I would like my film to be this very first step, to create a public discourse. Maybe they could talk about it with friends and family or initiate relevant discussions. We’re not just being left out of the picture, we aren’t powerless and there are laws already on the books that have to be enforced. We have the ability to act.
Hungry, 95’ / Dir., Screenplay, Production: Susanne Brandstaetter / Cinematography: Joerg Burger / Editing: Lisa Zoe Geretschläger, Stephan Bechinger / Sound design: Peter Kutin, Rojin Sharafi / Austria
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