R I D E O R D I E

2024, HD video, 30:13, black and white & color, with sound
Written, Edited & Directed NINA E. SCHÖNEFELD
Director of Photography VALENTIN GIEBEL
Sound & Music CARLOS PABLO VILLAMIZAR
Starring MARIA IVANOVA / ROBERT GRÜNDLER / CAROLINE SHEPARD
BENJAMIN HAIM SHEPARD / LEA CARRERA / LILIAN SCHULZ / JESSICA DAXENBERGER / MANFRED PECKL / VIOLET GREEN / SOPHIA SALEBIA / EMILIO RAPANÀ / MAX HOLLE / DOROTHY SHEPARD / ÄNNI LEE JONES / BARRETT SHEPARD

R I D E  O R  D I E  is a video installation that calls for relentless, radical resistance and discourse in response to our increasingly disillusioned times. It is about a crucial question of principle in the private and political life of every citizen. Ride or die?

The story of the video work revolves around a young couple who must experience the political upheaval in their country from a democracy to a right-wing populist autocracy. In the young couple's reality, total surveillance by CCTV has become normal. They keep asking themselves how a political upheaval and the abolition of the separation of powers could have happened in their home country in the first place. 
This video work is about the slow processes of change that are taking place almost silently in society and politics, and which are supported above all by an educated, almost fearful elite. The film's capitalist future society is characterized by a lack of transparency, the soft simplification of political discourse, fear through surveillance and the distraction from debates on justice, providing a fertile breeding ground for populist autocrats in the increasingly complex political arena. 
The young lovers quickly reach the point where they have to decide whether or not to go underground, which is dangerous for their lives. Based on a personal love story, it deals with aspects such as unconditional radical resistance, solidarity at all costs, justice and absolute love, right up to the possibility of death together.