"Two of the leading lights of contemporary experimental cinema ... A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness finds their styles melding in the most fascinating ways." – Cinema Scope

A musician (played by real-life musician Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, aka Lichens) searches for utopia. First, in an Estonian commune, where the rhythms of nature are being gently rediscovered. Second, alone in the Finnish wilderness, with only the wind and the moss for company. Third, on stage, amid a wall of strobe and distortion, as primal, Dionysian forces are unleashed upon the world.

A collaboration between two of the world's most daring experimental filmmakers, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness is the unclassifiable new cinematic excursion from Ben Rivers (Two Years at Sea, MIFF 2012; We Cannot Exist in this World Alone, MIFF 2008) and Ben Russell (Let Each One Go Where He May, MIFF 2010; We Cannot Exist in this World Alone, MIFF 2008). Across a triptych of textural evocations, Rivers and Russell unlock a world beyond that which we can see, where landscape, sound, movement and music have fused into a hypnotic, sensate whole.