There is less and less room today for what was once defined as experimental cinema. This is why when a film like Chronovisor appears, it immediately commands attention. As far as we know, it was premiered at the Rotterdam festival where it earned considerable success, and it marks the debut work of Kevin Walker and Jack Auen, collectively known as Cosmic Salon. It is described as a docufiction, partly metatextual, partly a tale of Vatican conspiracies, and, overall, an existential thriller for which comparisons have been drawn with directors Bill Morrison and Alex Garland. Too much? For now, we present the trailer of Chronovisor, which obviously plays on the theme of the time machine, before diving into the film’s plot.
Chronovisor: The Plot
Chronovisor is set in New York, and centers on a polyglot academic researcher who immerses herself in parascience and in a mountain of archival texts, with an obsession for a handmade device that, once belonging to the Vatican’s upper echelons, allows one to view the past, including the crucifixion of Jesus, on a small screen. Much of the film, which indeed unfolds in an experimental manner, consists of a sort of documentary and texts that we read on the screen, while the protagonist, Beatrice (Anne-Laure Sellier) consults thousands of documents that the directors translate for us. Despite this approach that at first may seem opaque, Chronovisor has fascinated and captured the attention of critics and audiences who have seen it in advance and is preparing to land on North American screens in September.
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