So You Don’t Get Lost
23’’, 2019 / Fiction / Format: 2k
An afternoon in the life of Isolde, a seven-year-old girl who lives in the countryside. Her walk home after school runs past meadows, field roads, forest paths and a stream. The perception of the landscapes and the changing weather form the simple thread for this slow storytelling. Games and daydreams take up her time, until she experiences a very surprising encounter.
At first I imagined that the lights in the cinema were turned off in order to better see the images on the screen. During the projection of the film I watched the spectators sit quietly in their seats. The darkness separates the viewer from the other, to be at the same time alone and together. Everyone who watches the film creates his or her own world. From every detail of a city or meadow, a character or a subject that appears on the screen, the spectator creates his own universe. Film does not inform us about a single world, but about multiple worlds. He does not speak to us of one reality, but of infinite realities. In the darkness of the room, everyone has the opportunity to dream and to freely express their dreams. If art can change things and come up with new ideas, it is only possible through the free creativity of the viewer. - Abbas Kiarostami excerpt from textes, entretiens, filmographie complete
The lights turn on and when I look up time has passed. I cannot say how much, but the world has not changed in my absence. There has been an exchange, the encounter between an artistic proposal and a personal story, a memory, a theme, a feeling that emerges through sounds, colors and forms. Thoughts flowing through a work that do not provide an answer, but rather the possibility of an evolution, an evolution of thoughts, or the confirmation of others.
I am inspired by filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami who use their films as a vehicle to make us think about reality and raise questions about who we are and what we do as individuals and as a society. By focusing our attention on actions and elements that often pass unnoticed due to their everyday life, we become more self-aware of existence as time goes by. The film screen should not be a frame, but a window on the world that should enable the viewer to make a journey of discovery.
What is childhood? How did I look at the world as a child?
By creating a collision between imagination and reality, I would like the viewer to leave the room in wonder after watching the film.
I have always been fascinated by nature and I admire the annual cycle. Humans and landscapes are interconnected, the landscape in all its different states is a reflection of the feelings of man. For the film, I wondered if I would situate the story in the city or in an environment surrounded by nature. By placing the film mostly in nature, I felt that I could work better with the elements of time and space, in which the flowing aspect of time plays an important role in the film.
