If you think that your partner, your co-worker or your neighbor can at times be enigmatic, you haven’t met Jonás yet. After many years away, he returns to the countryside to start work as a stonemason in Against Nature, the feature directorial debut of Mexican filmmaker Axel Bertha that will world premiere in the Proxima competition program of the60th editionof theKarlovy VaryInternationalFilm Festival(KVIFF)on Thursday, July 9.
The silent protagonist is as mysterious as the movie that wanders along the cinematic edge between the physical and the spiritual worlds. After all, the KVIFF website tells us, “he opens himself up to something intangible – a force that permeates the landscape, bodies, and time itself.” The man’s enigmatic nature “stems from the dark side of humanity and from his contact with the sacred,” it adds.
Without traditional storytelling but a focus on sound design and a hypnotic visual style, Against Nature promises “an absorbing cinematic experience that explores human cruelty as part of a cycle of destruction from which humanity has yet to find a way out,” as the KVIFF website notes.
Press notes for the film hint at a looming catastrophe. Jonás eventually finds himself “enacting a drama that seems born out of nature itself, hurtling toward a stark unraveling from which humanity, since its origins, has not been able to escape.”
Against Nature, written, directed and produced by Bertha, comes from Mexico-basedproductioncompaniesDomme andCárcava Cineand U.S.-basedLove Song. Fernanda de la Peza of Cárcava is the other producer. The movie was co-produced by The Lift and Carlos Reygadas.Edited byÓscar Enríquez with cinematography by Flavia Martínez and Edson Reyes, Against Nature features music by Ela Minus and Ariel Guzik, with sound by Andrés Silva.
‘The film draws from a police report of a murder that I found in a local newspaper in Mexico,” Bertha explains. “If we observe our recorded history, expansion, dominion of resources and violence are constant forces in the human story. Is human progress taking us away from nature and the world or bringing us closer to it?”
Jonás “navigates a world he feels he does not have access to, haunted by a past that keeps coming back, and an incapacity to communicate his feelings,” the filmmaker adds. “We shot on 35 millimeter on a very limited amount of film, in the surroundings and locations in the area where the real incident happened, under difficult weather conditions and with a cast of local non-actors.”
The writer-director even lived in the location for six months prior to the start of filming, “immersing myself in the landscapes and the rhythms of daily life there,” he shares. With “our markers to understand the world” at risk, “I wanted to make a film that questions and helps us regain our relationship with reality, with each other, and bring us closer to our hearts and dreams.”
THR can now exclusively premiere the trailer for Against Nature. It mentions hatred for the world, alienation, evil and “that black sphere.” After all, Against Nature is all about the unsettling atmosphere and the senses. Watch the haunting trailer below with care.