Wood and Water is a 2021 feature film for which I wrote a preliminary score for screen testing. The film is set in pastoral Germany for the first half, and then in urban Hong Kong for the second, and the two prominent instruments featured in the score’s primary theme are the church organ, which echoes the film’s early scenes in Germany, and the Tibetan singing bowl, which evokes the protagonist’s physical, spiritual and cultural displacement to Hong Kong.
This is one of the scenes from the film that features this primary theme, comprised of several long, lonely shots of the film's protagonist.
Anke retires from her job at the church in rural Black Forest and wants to reunite with her children by the Baltic Sea, a place where they used to live as a young family, where she lived her best years. Her son Max is unable to join them, as protests are bringing his new home Hong Kong to a standstill. She has been out of touch with him for many years and after an otherwise uneventful summer, spent in nostalgia and facing the void of retirement, she decides to visit him. A mother wants to check in on her children every now and then, but Hong Kong is also her adventure, her escape.