Les dormants
Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd
Belgium, France | 2009 | 60 min
Language : French
Subtitle : French
A woman worn out by age, a child being born, cemeteries populated by tombs, shrines frequented by pilgrims, lost love letters, scarecrows in the wind… In four fragments, between Europe and Africa, this intimate and poetic essay film attempts to define the indistinct space that lies between life and death, sleeping and waking, consciousness and oblivion.
A woman exhausted by age, a child being born, cemeteries populated by tombs, shrines frequented by pilgrims, lost love letters, scarecrows in the wind: the four fragments that form this film transport us from Belgium to the banks of the Senegal River, from the French Ardennes to the mountains of Western Sahara. With its intimate mood, Les dormants mixes personal images, scenes imbued with silent mysticism, and landscapes devoid of any human presence, while seeking to define the indistinct space that lies between life and death, sleeping and awakening, consciousness and oblivion. As an attentive filmmaker seeking out distant worlds, Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd combines two at once equal and opposite elements in his film: a story in the form of a "folder" that structures the work like a dictionary, and an evocative power that surpasses all prescriptive limits. The persistence of the images and the precision of the sound place the audience between presence and absence, between that which is visible and concrete and that which eludes the gaze, hiding in the layers of reality.
Luciano Barisone
Trailer
