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.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Calle Málaga
Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.
Sansho the Bailiff
The third of the great Japanese masters (with Ozu and Kurosawa), Mizoguchi is a poet of suffering. There's plenty of that here in his exquisite telling of an ancient folktale about the enslavement of a woman and her two children.
Agatha's Almanac
Shot over six years on vibrant 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is an artful documentary portrait of filmmaker Amalie Atkin’s octogenarian aunt, who has fashioned herself an endearingly simple and self-sustaining lifestyle on her Manitoba farm.
Fucktoys Advance Screening + Annapurna Sriram Q&A
Bold, irreverent, and fiercely queer, Fucktoys plunges into a world where pleasure, performance, and identity collide. This special advance screening comes with a Q&A with filmmaker Annapurna Sriram.
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.
