THE END OF TIME

What is time? Peter Mettler puts the question to physicists at CERN’s particle accelerator, where time is broken down into billionths of a second, and to a man on Hawaii’s Big Island whose house was the only one left standing on the southern slope while the lava buried everything else. He films the decay of downtown Detroit and the people starting afresh there, the DJ Richie Hawtin, a Hindu death ritual near the place where Buddha attained enlightenment – and, at the end, his own mother, who urges him to make good use of his time. “The End of Time” by Peter Mettler, Switzerland/Canada 2012, is not an explanatory film but an essay of images and voices.

Ten years after “Gambling, Gods and LSD” (2002), Mettler returns to the grand form, with a camera that critics praised unanimously, and an openness that some read as meditation and others as presumption. The premiere took place in Locarno on 4 August 2012; the Toronto International Film Festival included the film on its Canada’s Top Ten list, and it received three nominations at the 2013 Swiss Film Prize. The film was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2012.

Shown at the 2012 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2012 · Film Archive