Elliot Eugénie

Film

On rural land, far from the urban conurbations, where there are no services or shops, everyone clams up and shuts themselves away. Life is a matter of almost quotidian survival. Mutual help is the norm, the exchange of food or services a regular event, but fear too is constant. In only a few years, authority has gradually shrunk away. Burglaries are frequent, both by day and by night. “Living in fear has become the norm, and we have grown used to it, even if it is terrifying.”

In this story evoking the flatness of an everyday life without a future, in territories where tarmac roads and cars are already a memory, a woman helps her brother remove the traces of a failed burglary. Forgotten by society, marginalised in a life made up of immemorial tasks, flight and urgency in response to danger transform the initial monotony into a malevolent spiral. This tense atmosphere gradually reveals the anomic vision of an almost parallel world navigating between science fiction and naturalism. A single positive note stands out in the middle of this hostile picture: a sister’s protective feelings towards her brother.

Elliot Eugénie

Born in 1994, Elliot Eugénie began working with film at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Nantes-Saint-Nazaire and continued at Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains (2019–2021). In his work he shows ways of coping with and avoiding degradation (be it social or environmental) and is interested in the genesis of unifying events and the emergence of utopias. Through a sensorial exploration of narration, he develops the vision of a distant, suspended world, oscillating between realism or parallel times. The narratives, constructed from gestures, atmospheres and music, extrapolate the everyday to extract its intensity, forming a sensuous and effervescent mosaic.

Production

Credits

Acknowledgments

Franck Poupa, Neige Poupa, Michel Michel, Émeric Morgant, Romain Thénaisy (Entreprise Cassier), Stéphane Corbel et la Station de radioastronomie de Nançay, Paulette Eugénie, Madeleine Van Doren, Daniel Dobbels, Bar le Raboliot.