Canadian Premiere
In 2014, during the war in Syria, ISIS released a full-length propaganda film with the aesthetics of a blockbuster. In an attempt to reconcile the dual forces of terror with his own fascination, former film critic and video essayist Kevin B. Lee tries to use formal film analysis to examine the film, only to realize he can’t escape the weight of violent spectacle.
An immersive, essayistic documentary, Afterlives is bursting with ideas. Revolving around the central metaphor of Medusa — inspired by a museum exhibit — Lee considers the limits of observation in an age mediated by endless iterations of extreme images. Compelled to dig deeper, he turns to artists and activists, emerging technologies and historical research, to unearth how the violence of extremist media retains its power over time and seeps out into the groundwater of our digital environments. Constantly probing and reevaluating its own framework, the film rejects reductive answers or cliched responses to questions about violence, extremism, justice, and art.
Content Considerations: Extremist material, terrorist propaganda
Community Partner
Morehshin Allahyari, Nava Zarabian, Anne Speckhard, Sebastian Baden, Bernd Zywietz, Yorck Beese
Germany/France/Belgium
2025
English
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Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits & Director
Producer
Caroline Kirberg
Screenwriter
Kevin B. Lee
Cinematography
Ginan Seidl
Editor
Janina Herhoffer
Original Music
Maya Shenfeld, Tadklimp
Kevin B. Lee
Kevin B. Lee is a filmmaker and educator who has produced over 360 video essays exploring film and media. His works have screened in prestigious venues, including his award-winning Transformers: The Premake, which introduced the “desktop documentary” format and was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by Sight & Sound. In 2016, the Austrian Filmmuseum programmed a retrospective of his video essays. He was the 2017 Artist in Residence at the Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin. He is the Locarno Film Festival Professor for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts at Università della Svizzera italiana.
Photo by Victor Brigola
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