08/10/2009

The feature film debut of London-schooled Luxembourg director Max Jacoby, Dust, will have its world premiere at the Pusan International Film Festival. The largest South Korean film festival starts today in the eponymous port city. Dust will have its official screenings on October 13 and 14.

Jacoby, who graduated from the London Film School in 2001 with the short Babysitting, became one of Luxembourg’s hottest young directors with his 2005 short film Butterflies. The film, adapted from an Ian McEwan short story that also inspired a short by German director Wolfgang Becker, won the UIP Venezia award at the Venice Film Festival and was nominated for a European Film Award.

His long-awaited feature debut, Dust, is an English-language production filmed with Luxembourg money and on location in Luxembourg, which fills in for an unknown (though Mitteleuropa-looking) location.

Its story is set in an indefinite time, when most of humanity seems to have either died or disappeared. Two siblings, played by British thespians Olly Alexander and Catherine Steadman, live a life of relative tranquillity in a large house in the abandoned countryside. Their daily routine is disturbed when another human being (Andrew Hawley) suddenly shows up.

The screenplay, also written by Jacoby, is light on explanations and dialogue, and the director and Swedish cinematographer Fredrik Bäckar keep the camera moving to a fault. Nonetheless, the film derives some clear visceral power from its intriguing and carefully created atmospheres, its subtle gestures and the unspoken that lies just underneath the apparently calm surface.

The film was produced by Pol Cruchten and Jeanne Geiben for local outfit Red Lion, in co-production with Austrian production company KGP Kranzelbinder Gabriele Production. It was backed by Luxembourg Film Fund.

In Pusan, Dust will be presented in the Flash Forward section that showcases first and second films of promising new talents from outside Asia. The film will be released in Luxembourg in November.