30/01/2023 - Jessica Woodworth transposes the questions posed by The Desert of the Tartars into a sumptuous film, set in a post-apocalyptic future that asks us about our present

Obedience. Endurance. Sacrifice. These are the three key words that punctuate the lives of the men of Fort Kairos. On a morning that resembles so many others, Luka, a young sniper prodigy, arrives as if from the sky to assist this troop, gathered in anguished expectation of an invisible enemy: the men of the North. At first euphoric about this common program, to fight and resist, Luka realises little by little that the strange atmosphere that reigns on the camp is more of a great illusion than a real threat. The collective, at first impressive, soon seems to sink into a kind of degeneration fed by a cult maintained by the high command, whose orders are never questioned. So when Luka dares to question, the whole edifice begins to shake on its foundations.

Luka will draw the strength to doubt from the friendship he forms with two other soldiers, a friendship that passes through carnal relations, an intense but mysterious relationship, as if the bodies were telling stories that words, imprisoned by the founding myth of the invisible enemy, could no longer formulate. Before the minds, it is the bodies that resist.

In Luka [+see also:
trailer
interview: Jessica Woodworth
film profile], an inhabited vision of Dino Buzzati's classic The Desert of the Tartars presented in the IFFR's Big Screen Competition, director Jessica Woodworth, along with her talented cinematographer Virginie Surdej, films these bodies up close, often in motion, in 16mm and in sumptuous black and white. If the intimidating settings that make up Fort Kairos are the subject of meticulous, often symmetrical, tableaux, the bodies, when they are not constrained by hierarchy, are moving, even dancing, a fluid and resolutely untameable material.

We feel all the weight of the buildings and reliefs, a disused dyke found in Sicily and the threatening Etna. In Jessica Woodworth's work, places are an integral part of the dramaturgy (one thinks in particular of Tito's Croatian island, Brijuni, transformed into a sanatorium in her latest film The Barefoot Emperor [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jessica Woodworth
film profile]). Here, Fort Kairos, a threatening presence, seems to instil the motto of the place.

To embody this story, and this symbolic reflection on the inanity of the conflicts that animate humanity and the need for collective narratives to control it, this charge against military absurdity and the group's allegiance to an authoritarian command, a guide was needed who would lead and accompany the spectator. This is the role assigned to Luka, played by the magnetic Jonas Smulders. Alongside him are actors of multiple origins, the excellent Belgian talents Sam Louwyck and Jan Bijvoets, the charismatic Armenian actor Samvel Tadevossian, and in an unexpected, troubled and fluid role, the actress Géraldine Chaplin, already spectacular in the director's previous film.

Luka is produced in Belgium for Bo Films by Peter Brosens (who co-directed with Jessica Woodworth her five previous features as well as producing them), and co-produced by Krater Films (Belgium), Beluga Tree (Belgium), Volya Films (Netherlands), Domino (Armenia), Art Fest (Bulgaria), Palosanto Films (Italy). International sales are handled by Films Boutique.

(Translated from French)