Nomadie: A Strange, Dusty Trip Through Old Europe

Is this for you?

If you enjoy watching silent, grainy footage of people making wooden shoes or watching Norwegian infantry try not to fall over on skis, you’ll probably find Nomadie weirdly hypnotic. If you need a story, or a narrator to tell you why we’re looking at a statue of Hans Christian Andersen for three minutes, you are going to be bored to tears within the first act.

This isn’t a documentary in the modern sense. It feels more like someone emptied their attic of 16mm film reels and just decided to splice them together in a loose geographic order. It jumps from a wedding in Norway to a random harvest festival in Sweden without so much as a ‘how do you do.’

The Good, The Odd, and The Zeppelin

The footage of the Dornier Do-X seaplane is genuinely wild. It’s this massive, clunky beast of a machine that looks like it has no business staying in the air, yet there it is, lumbering over the water. It’s the kind of thing you’d miss if you checked your phone for two seconds.

Then there’s the Hindenburg appearance. Seeing Paul Von Hindenburg address a crowd in Germany feels heavy, especially knowing exactly what happens to that part of the world a few years later. The film doesn’t acknowledge that, of course—it’s just busy showing off the giant zeppelin and the Bavarian folk dancers.

Speaking of folk dances, the movie really loves a good cultural oddity. We get deep dives into flax production, which is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but then it flips to a polar bear hunt. The pacing is totally unhinged. You don’t get time to process the beauty of a fjord before you’re staring at someone’s feet carving clogs.

Why it feels like a fever dream

There’s no polish here. It’s rough, jumpy, and occasionally the camera operator seems distracted by a passing bird. It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in Jungle Jam, though obviously in a very different setting. It doesn’t have the dramatic stakes of A Fight to the Finish, but it has that same 'captured in the moment' honesty that you don't get in modern, over-produced travel shows.

I found myself wondering if the people in these shots knew they were being filmed, or if they were just annoyed by the guy with the camera getting in the way of their wedding or their bass fishing. The scene with the storks is particularly long. It goes on for so long it almost becomes a test of endurance. I’m not sure if it’s art or just lazy editing, but it’s stuck in my brain now.

It’s not a movie you ‘watch’ in the traditional sense. It’s more like a digital scrapbook. It’s quiet, a little dusty, and doesn't care if you're keeping up. 🎞️