Savagery

Rèmi De Gaalon, Jonathan Le Fourn / France / 2017 / International Premiere / 94 min.

synopsis

Just forty years ago, the Brazilian state of Pará was covered by rainforest. Today, it is an area where the wilderness comes into harsh conflict with the savagery of the urban population. Using several segments, a team of two French documentarians compose an especially brutal poetical mythology of a place where poachers hunt snakes that are many meters long, crowds of people look on during police murder investigations, and a mother must apologize because her adolescent rapper son insulted the local police. Using a handheld camera, the filmmakers take spontaneous shots, sensitive to both the genius loci and the unaffected interviews with local inhabitants.

"We went to Pará, Brazil, at the pursuit of some sort of vision of savagery. Crossing tales, ecological themes and fantastic apparitions, we try to undo this arbitrary separation between the fascination with nature and the fear of violence." J. Le Fourn

biography

Jonathan Le Fourn (1983) co-authored the documentary L’exil et le royaume (2008), in which he and Andreï Schtakleff focused on the northern French city of Calais. This film was nominated in the competitive Horizons Section of the Venice Film Festival. For Rémi de Gaalon (1982), Savagery represents his film debut. He has a degree in film studies and, until now, has worked as a freelance photographer.