Pacifiction

Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra is a central figure within the recent wave of “slow cinema”, and has often been called an “enfant terrible”. Even more so after his previous feature film Liberté, which was a dark study of a group of libertines’ sexual escapades during the early days of the French Revolution.

Serra has been a regular at the Cannes festival, but with this year's Pacifiction he participated for the first time in its main competition. This is also the director’s first film set in the present – more specifically, depicting the political and social life on the French Polynesian island of Tahiti. The film explores how this community is affected by the rumors of nuclear tests about to take place in their immediate surroundings, with a magnetic Benoît Magimel as the French authorities’ local representative trying to maneuver between the island's various social venues and centers of power.

Pacifiction is a captivating, enigmatic and deeply fascinating film by one of Europe's most original and uncompromising auteurs.

This film was chosen by film critic Aleksander Huser.