LIDF

Hitchhike the Wind

Nikolai Friedrich, Michael Friedrich, Nina Rath | Austria, Kazakstan | 87 mins

In the summer of 2009 five young Austrians head off on a unique adventure. With a bunch of parachutes in their backpacks and a very vague plan in their minds they arrive in a small run-down town in central Kazakhstan: Arkalyk. They begin to scavenge and haggle for an old car and bits of junk and slowly assemble an extraordinary vehicle – a car with a sail. Equipped with a compass, and a map they set sails across the Kazakh central steppe carried only by wind power. Their aim is to travel 600km to the ship cemetery near the Aral Lake, once one of the biggest inland waters, now greatly dried up denuded. During their trip through the vast empty steppes the travellers overcome unexpected hurdles, encounter strangers with whom they cannot speak, and a genuine sense of travel in all its unnerving strangeness. Picaresque, funny, poignant.
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