“THE END OF THE QUIET” // TRIBECA 2025
BY MATEO MORENO
The National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) is a 13,000 square mile territory that stretches across Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. This area is unique in that it’s somewhat stuck in time. Stuck because it is home to the Green Bank Observatory, which studies radi0 waves to facilitate various forms of scientific research and for the gathering of military intelligence. The observatory has a ultra-sensitive radio telescope that is so sensitive that most electronic devices are prohibited due to interference. There are some exceptions: emergency broadcasts are allowed but even a microwave, something we take for granted as being something you can just have, are a no-go. No wi-fi either. Just a trip back in time, especially the closer you are to the telescope.
There are multiple fascinating things about THE END OF THE QUIET. For starters, just seeing this town exist in a sort of 1990’s heyday is truly wild. Seeing how people have adapted, or not adapted, to this kind of lifestyle. We also see that no matter how hard you try, technology will begin to creep in. People will try to bring things in, things that everyone else everywhere else seems to not be able to live without. Imagine the times your smartphone has broken and you’ve had to go without it until you can replace it. Immediately you realize exactly why you don’t miss printing out all those Mapquest pages just to drive somewhere that you’ve never been before. We meet several of the residents here including a NRA loving Grandfather who loves to shoot guns with his granddaughter and is trying to prepare her for an imaginary invasion and watches them having a grand old time, until they don’t (mostly because he talks at her, not with her, and what he says goes). Then we have a woman who lives in this area because she claims she has “electromagnetic sensitivity” and even left her husband in France just to prove that this is indeed a thing she suffers from.
Once we reach the second part of the story which is set three years later (“The Noise”), we see an Officer finding many more hotspots than in previous years. Technology is finding its way in. We meet more people, follow up on a few more, find out that one passed away. But the narrative and even the overarching theme is left up to the audience. Which is intriguing on one level but ends up being a bit frustrating. It is almost as if the documentarians found a really great subject and forgot to gel it together with a point. It’s a slow, meandering slug of a film, one that is indeed quiet and calm and if you’re waiting for something big or surprising to happen, keep waiting. Cause it doesn’t. It is interesting and because of this documentary most people will find out about this area for the first time (including myself). But the real journey is actually making it to the final credits while realizing you may not have learned nearly as much as you had hoped going in.
GRADE: C+
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Kasper Bisgaard, Mikael Lypinski FEATURED AS PART OF THE 2025 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL. FOR MORE INFO: https://tribecafilm.com/films/end-of-quiet-2025