Christian Frei & Maxim Arbugaev
Switzerland | 2018 | 113 min
European Premiere
Languages : English, Russian, Korean, Chinese, Sakha
Subtitles : English, French
In the long-frozen lands of the Arctic islands now liberated by the melting ice, hunters risk their lives for the white gold that has rested there for thousands of years: huge mammoth tusks from whose sale they are able to live for several months. It is in this open-air cemetery, where Maxim Arbugaev had already shot Hunters (VdR 2015), that in 2012 hunters discovered the miraculously preserved carcass of a mammoth, into which Russian researchers have since been trying to breathe new life via cloning. During this time, in the United States, China and South Korea, Christian Frei tracks the scientists trying their hardest to decode the mysteries of the genome and dreaming of moving to the next stage: not only decrypting, but writing! At the dawn of an unprecedented scientific revolution that will see man take control of life, the two filmmakers create a captivating film, a reflection on human nature and its irrepressible need for adventure and discovery, without ever losing sight of the background on which they occur, between triumph of capitalism, destruction of the planet and the possibility of a totalitarian future.
Céline Guénot
