- France
HIGH LIFE
Synopsis
“High Life” (France, 2018) by Claire Denis is set aboard a spaceship approaching a black hole beyond the solar system. On board are death-row inmates who were offered the chance to serve their sentence in the service of science. Among them is Monte, who withdraws from life on board through abstinence, and the doctor Dibs, who uses her fellow travellers for reproductive experiments. As the film begins, only Monte and a small child remain, his daughter Willow. The film tells in flashback how this came to be.
Claire Denis’s first English-language film, starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche, is science fiction without a space-opera setting: a study of body, desire and violence in an enclosed space, with images that call to mind a bunker rather than a spaceship. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2018. It was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2018.
Festival
Shown at the 2018 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.
