Realm of Satan – Films – Visions du Réel

Scott Cummings
United States | 2024 | 82 min
Swiss Premiere
Languages : English, German, Spanish, Swedish
Subtitles : English, French

The kingdom of Satan is here on Earth. The curious disciples of the Church of Satan open their doors and happily invite us into their weird world. In a series of delightfully picturesque vignettes, Realm of Satan conjures up a devilishly sophisticated and stylised portrait of a community which is still relatively unknown to the general public.

“A big part of being a Satanist is to have style,” declares one of the Church of Satan’s disciples against a lavishly decorated backdrop of occult paraphernalia, cunningly underlining the community’s obsession with aesthetics. An obsession Scott Cummings savvily exploits by giving these colourful, and largely affluent, characters every opportunity to freely express themselves in a collaborative series of meticulously staged tableaux. From sinister rituals in dark rooms to watering plants in the summer sun, these impressionistic vignettes seem guided by genuine curiosity, sardonic distance, strange fascination, outright bafflement and all the way back again. By completely eschewing any investigative aspirations, Realm of Satan dares us to test our preconceptions by adopting the visual language of its subject. A mesmerising museum of sorts, in which the collection of human pieces are shown, in spite of appearances, to be as harmless as stuffed animals.

James Berclaz-Lewis

Realm of Satan, 2024
The Adversary, 2017
Buffalo Juggalos, 2014
Spacemonkey, 2012
Launderman, 2008
The Hesher, 2006