The cloud as an omen for social collapse is a common motif in literature. In Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise from 1984 a persistent cloud symbolizes the collective alienation from a world with media oversaturation and rampant consumerism, for example. Ever since the nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl clouds have stood for the oncoming, ultimate doomsday scenario – the self-inflicted annihilation of humanity. In HEIMATLAND (translation: homeland) a young Swiss directing collective works with a similar apocalyptic mood. The premise of this anthology is: a mysterious, magnetically charged cloud approaches the country and threatens to bring a severe storm of epic proportions. The early worries of an insurance company about the expected astronomic costs of such a catastrophe give way to a mass panic when it turns out that the cloud won’t leave the country's border. What follows is a state of emergency, hoarding, violence, excess, and racist attacks. The filmmakers frame this as a satiric dystopia of a broken society. HEIMATLAND works as a provocative dismantlement of the idyllic “Heimat” myth. When globalization critic Jean Ziegler talks about the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were turned away at the border during the Second World War it brings to mind the continuity of refugee politics. Friedrich Dürrenmatt talked about his country as a “prison in which the Swiss have fled to…imprisoned by will due to their neutrality.” HEIMATLAND demonstrates the consequences of such a construction in a biting simulation game.

Jens Mayer

Translation: Elinor Lewy