A story about how everything we love, everything we learn, everything we build, everything we fear, will one day be gone.

When looking at films we always search for the deep backboned storylines that support solid cinematography and other production values. In Joschka Laukeninks’ little masterpiece, the entire story is literally a ‘Backstory‘. This 8 minute short will rush through all your emotions while passing through the highlight moments of an unknown man, all viewed from an outer body experience. The concept itself gets you anchored in place as you see the main protagonist grow up and go through these life changing events, creating an odd but reinforced attachment to a character you don’t even know or see.

BACKSTORY was sot over a period of 1,5 years in Germany. We had 17 shooting days, which is really a lot for an 8 minute short. So many people worked so hard and I guess we could have shot a small feature film in the same time – but that was not the goal. The goal was to compress an entire life story down to the shortest amount of time necessary to make it emotional. At the same time it was an experiment if it is possible to just show our protagonist from behind and still make the viewer connect to him.

While counting the enormous amount of shots this film holds, it’s no surprise the film took over a year and a half to create. But the result is something magnificent, being one of the most complete films we’ve seen in a while. Starting from the bone chilling storyline, the cinematography is exemplary, and pacefully edited powered by a pounding and matching score. A type of film that can be remembered for a lifetime.