Un comté apocryphe
Geoffrey Lachassagne
France | 2023 | 70 min
World premiere
Languages : English, French
Subtitles : English, French
Yoknapatawpha is the name of American writer William Faulkner’s apocryphal county. “Apocryphal”, meaning “of doubtful authenticity”. Authentic or not, this is where Faulkner set all of his stories. He even drew its map. That is what guides Geoffrey Lachassagne in this brilliant and dizzying cinematographic adaptation.
Yoknapatawpha is the name of a county imagined by American writer William Faulkner (1897-1962). Inspired by his native Mississippi, it is a land he described as “apocryphal”, i.e. “not proven to be authentic”. Authentic or not, this is where all his stories took place. He even drew its map. This is what guides Geoffrey Lachassagne throughout his brilliant and dizzying cinematographic adaptation. Superimposing the map onto a very real landscape, the filmmaker projects Yoknapatawpha onto our world. The story that runs through it is one of dispossession, exploitation, colonial narratives, greed and overconsumption. A story that repeats itself on a loop, like the 360-degree panoramic views of the county’s landscape. With the power of ambiguity, Geoffrey Lachassagne takes us on a journey between reality and fantasy… Imagination, observation and experience: drawing on these three sources as described by Faulkner, the filmmaker produces a cinematographic feat, which tells the story of how our globalised world came about.
Alice Riva
