If you think your partner, coworker, or neighbor can be mysterious sometimes, you haven’t met Jonas yet. After many years, he returns to the countryside and begins working as a stonemason in the city Against naturethe feature directorial debut of Mexican director Axel Bertha which will have its world premiere in the Proxima Competition program of the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) on Thursday 9 July.
The silent protagonist is as mysterious as the film, wandering along the cinematic edge between the material and spiritual worlds. After all, the KVIFF website tells us, it “opens to something intangible—a force that permeates the landscape, bodies, and time itself.” He adds that the man’s mysterious nature “stems from the dark side of humanity and from his connection with the sacred.”
Without traditional storytelling but focusing on sound design and hypnotic visual style, Against nature It promises “an engrossing cinematic experience that explores human cruelty as part of a cycle of destruction from which humanity has yet to find a way out,” notes KVIFF’s website.
Press notes for the film suggest a looming disaster. Jonas ultimately finds himself “acting out a drama that seems born of nature itself, hurtling toward a stark disintegration from which humanity, since its origins, has been unable to escape.”
Against natureThe film is written, directed and produced by Bertha, and comes from Mexico-based production companies Domme and Cárcava Cine, and US-based Love Song. Fernanda de la Pesa from Carcava is the other producer. The film was co-produced by The Lift and Carlos Reygadas. Edited by Oscar Enriquez with cinematography by Flavia Martinez and Edson Reyes, Against nature Featuring music by Ela Minus and Ariel Guzik, with vocals by Andrés Silva.
Bertha explains: “The film is based on a police report about a murder that I found in a local newspaper in Mexico. If we observe our recorded history, expansion, control of resources and violence are constant forces in the human story. Is human progress distancing us from nature and the world or bringing us closer to it?”
The director adds that Jonas “navigates a world he feels he cannot reach, haunted by a past that keeps coming back, and an inability to communicate his feelings.” “We shot in 35mm on a very limited amount of film, in the surroundings and locations in the area where the real accident occurred, under difficult weather conditions and with a crew of non-local actors.”
The writer-director even lived on location for six months before filming began, “immersing myself in the landscape and rhythms of daily life there,” he says. With our “markers for understanding the world” at risk, “I wanted to make a film that would ask questions and help us reclaim our relationship with reality, with each other, and bring us closer to our hearts and our dreams.”
THR The first trailer can now be viewed exclusively for Against nature. He mentions hatred of the world, isolation, evil, and “that black ball.” After all, Against nature It is all about the unsettling atmosphere and senses. Watch the haunting trailer below carefully.
