The Veil of Senses – Films – Visions du Réel

Il Velo dei Sensi

Elisa Baccolo
Italy | 2026 | 19 min
World premiere
Languages : Italian, English
Subtitles : English, French

Dante Balbo’s poetic phrasing invites us to imagine the world as he – blind from birth – experiences it. His gentle voice guides us through the undulating dance of light and sound vibrations that populate his mental images. Could it be that we, who think we see everything, actually perceive only a grain of sand in the vastness of the infinite landscape?

Dante Balbo has never seen anything. In a calm, wisdom-inspiring voice, he poetically intones the description of the worldly sensations that fill his mind. Archival scientific images serve to reinforce the narrator’s message: while our perception of the world may seem complete, it is only ever highly relative. Thus, from the deep blackness emerge lights and movements through an opening that evokes the pinhole camera – a primitive, handmade device that preceded photography. The modelling of this “cloak made of luminous vibrations”, as Dante describes his inner images, transforms under the formal experiments of the filmmaker who, in striving to imagine what Dante perceives, embarks on a journey through the history of images that culminates in shifting, shimmering forms with psychedelic overtones. In evoking his dreams or the memory of the feel of a fabric closely linked to the recollection of his first love, the man illustrates the words of American philosopher Robert M. Pirsig: “We take a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world”.

Raphaëlle Pireyre

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