Tiergarten

A gripping cinema documentary about animals, people and nature.
‘Tiergarten’ is the title of Hans Andreas Guttner's documentary film, which is not limited to showing the four-legged, winged or meandering stars of zoological gardens as attractively as possible. The author and director is interested in more: ‘I show the zoo as hope for the future. No longer as a mere entertainment industry, but as a place where the ideas of species conservation and biodiversity take centre stage.’ Which could automatically lead to a boost for the much-debated renaturalisation programme: Animals need space to live.
The film skilfully alternates between views of the popular and scientific areas of the zoo, which tend to flourish in secret. At times we are guests of elephants, koalas or pandas, at other times we look over the shoulders of the experts who look after the conservation of the species. Here, the film sometimes leaves its traditional area in the zoo. To look after the pond turtles, for example, activists move to the Danube floodplains, where they protect the turtles' freshly laid eggs from predators such as the fox. The spectacular initiative to reintroduce a bird that has long since become extinct in this country, the odd-looking Northern Bald Ibis, takes to the skies. In spectacular images, you can see how the young birds follow people in the autumn as they fly in small flying machines to their wintering grounds in the south.