Kestrel's Eye

Although filming animals in their natural habitat is traditionally a favourite subject for many documentary filmmakers, the images from the life of a kestrel family in FALKENS ÖGA probably tell us more about that peculiar species of Homo sapiens than about this bird. For good reason, director Mikael Kristersson (1947) emphatically borrows the perspective of our feathered friends, in other words the bird‘s-eye view, of the world of humans. He already did so in previous films, like his best known documentary PICA, PICA (1987), about magpies. In FALKENS ÖGA, he takes us to a family of kestrels that resides in an old village church in Southwest Sweden and that follows the movements of the rare passers-by in this deserted wintry place. The result is that the spectator gets a chance to look at his own life from a different perspective, which has a refreshing and at times humorous effect.