EVOLUTION

"If you like your sci-fi cerebral and your mind blown then this nightmarish masterpiece will be the highlight of the entire festival programme." – Irish Times

Nicolas lives with his mother on a remote island inhabited only by women and young boys. Here, in a hospital overlooking the ocean, the women administer mysterious medical treatments to their sons. But when Nicolas spies the rotting corpse of another young boy, he begins to question his situation and surroundings.

Similar to her husband and collaborator, Gaspar Noé – she contributed to the screenplay for Enter the Void (MIFF 2015) – Lucile Hadžihalilović (Innocence, MIFF 2005) demonstrates an uncanny ability for conceptualising new worlds and evoking an eerily surreal grotesquerie that will come back to haunt you. Her ultra slow-burn take on body-horror contrasted against magnificent underwater imagery is at once disgusting and sensual, sinister and sublime.

"Hadžihalilović is digging up the corpses of Lewis Carroll, the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, chopping them to pieces and then stitching them back as a grotesque film sculpture, but also adding her own distinctive and progressive sheen." – Little White Lies