Two construction workers wander through a hybrid natural-industrial zone by day and night, exploring and discovering seemingly insignificant details. This experimental film is a walking tour through a possibly post-apocalyptic world where the familiar seems alien, invoking a sense of mystery and wonder towards the natural world and our relationship to it. It is a slow, totally visual work with phantasmic nighttime sequences and attention to the tactile (a piece of shale, moss, a shell) as the two men touch, feel, and listen to the world around them. Unsettling and eerie at times, the film never explicitly answers any questions, yet their journey is oddly compelling. With an atmosphere reminiscent of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, the film forces us to find our own interpretations of their explorations.
Community Partner
Luca Ruch, Olivier Matthey
Switzerland
2021
In French with English subtitles
Featured in:
International Shorts: Personal Journeys
The films in this shorts program are all about discovery. Beautiful and thought-provoking voyages of internal and external discovery that honour relations and history, while encountering stimuli that promote a new understanding of self.
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Love
This warm, thoughtful piece offers shrewd comic observations on modern dating as it trains a quizzical eye on the trysts of a female doctor, Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and her colleague, a gay male nurse, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen).
Sex
Two chimney sweeps living in heterosexual marriages find their views on sexuality and gender challenged by a series of unexpected events. In a set of sharply scripted conversations, both men confront heretofore unexplored aspects of their identity.
3 Faces
Iranian filmmaker Panahi and actress Behnaz Jafari, both playing themselves, receive a video in which a distraught teenaged girl, whose acting dreams have been quashed appears to kill herself. Panahi and Jafari decide to investigate...
Dreams
The third installment in the Sex/Dreams/Love trilogy is another rich, absorbing tale. 17-year-old Johanne writes a confessional about her flirtation with a (female) teacher. But the writing is too good to stay private...
Transit
Trust the director of Phoenix and Barbara to re-imagine a WWII romantic intrigue into something unsettlingly contemporary. With occupying forces closing in, a German refugee (Franz Rogowski) assumes a dead writer's identity and flees to Marseille.
Credits
Producer
Delphine Jeanneret
Screenwriter
Andrea Bordoli
Cinematography
Andrea Bordoli
Editor
Andrea Bordoli, Noemie Ruben
Original Music
Marco Guglielmetti, Andrea Bordoli
Director
Andrea Bordoli
Andrea Bordoli’s research and practice lies at the intersection between anthropological theory, film, and visual art. His works have been presented in academic settings and exhibited in film festivals and art spaces nationally and internationally. He is currently pursuing a research-creation PhD in Media Anthropology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. Since January 2022, he has been a visiting artist-researcher in the Anthropology Department of McGill University.