Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor: Leviathan

Directors of Maginificent 7, Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, write about the film that opens the festival tonight:

The first great cinematic hit of a new visual era which is taking over the world. Something you have not seen before! A visual treatment that fully meets the great expectations of a cinematic vision born in the 20th century – a camera freed from the dictates of narration, a new all-seeing eye capable of creating a whole new world from the fragments of the old! “Leviathan” is the film which harkens the new possibilities of the visual in cinema.

The film takes us to the coast of New Bradford in North America, the former world capital of whaling, which served as the inspiration for Melville’s legendary novel “Moby Dick”. Today it remains one of the largest fishing harbours, from which over 500 ships sail each month. Filmmakers Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor follow one of these fishing vessels, sailing out into the murky, black waters on a trawling expedition.

And so begins a “gothic horror documentary! A world we have never seen before! “The most spectacular film of the year!” Such praise is heaped on by film critics fascinated by the artistic achievement of two noted visual artists.

Without a single spoken world, the film creates a Biblical sea beast, the Leviathan, embodied in a gigantic metal monster that thunders by, devouring fish while beseiged by flocks of seagulls. Time and space become foreign to us. An awesome and frightening document of a parallel dark side and at the same time an inner image of our world that is devouring both itself and the planet.

France, UK, USA, 2012, 87 mins.