How to restore heart beating without a defibrillator? The creators provide the answer in their film: with really good music. – It’s a short movie that really stuck in my head. Making this film a musical was a brilliant solution – writes Natasza Kornacka from the LFF Media Group about Stranger
Focus: Idea is a competition for short films that surprise the audience with the combination of form and content in an innovative way. Stranger, displayed on the first day of the festival, was the perfect candidate in this category. Directors Jehnny Beth and Iris Chassaigne show us a musical story about searching for a certain feeling. The feeling of being alive. Experiencing the present, being. And what makes us alive if not the beating of the heart? And does life have any meaning if we are only its passive observers?
A, one of the heroines of the film, whose heart has not been beating for 548 days, is looking for answers to these questions. Fortunately, she meets J on her way, who takes her on an aggressively musical journey full of adrenaline. Making this film a musical was a brilliant idea playing on the words ‘music beat’ and ‘heartbeat’.
For me personally, nothing raises the pulse as much as perfectly performed music. Between the pure rock ‘More Adrenaline’ and the emotional and longing ‘Amazing Life’, Jehnny Beth and Iris Chassaigne provide answers to previously asked questions, not only to A, but also to the audience.
This feeling that the characters are chasing is impossible to describe in words, only life, full of unexpected emotions, is left waiting for us behind the door to which we always have the key, at most deep in our pockets.
Natasza Kornacka