27/04/2023 - Pau Faus’ second feature film catapults us into a world where human beings try to survive personal and global crises as best they can

Born and raised in Barcelona, the artist, filmmaker, architect and activist Pau Faus made himself known to audiences and critics alike via his medium-length movie Sí se puede. Seven Days at PAH Barcelona and his debut feature film Ada for Mayor, which won the Gaudí Award for Best Documentary. Seven years later, his latest poetic feature film Fauna [+see also:
interview: Pau Faus and Sergi Cameron
film profile] is being presented in a world premiere in the Visions du Réel’s International Competition.

Homing in on the ancestral work of a shepherd who’s keen to save his profession, and a medical-research-centre-come-ghost-ship whose work revolves around experimenting on animals and which seems totally cut off from the world, Fauna makes us think about the anthropocentrism which permeates our society. Sharing his visionary and multifaceted outlook, Pau Faus invites us to follow him through the recesses of a humanity which seems to have lost faith in its own dominating power, not least because of Covid.

Deprived of many vital resources and suffering from uncertainty and a paranoia that’s spiralling out of control, the protagonists of Fauna look for answers to questions which are bigger than they are. Set out like a dreamy pastoral tale, the film criticises the Anthropocene era, confronting it with its own fragility and with a reality it can no longer control. Nature seems to want to rebel against mankind’s excessive control, in a kind of silent revolution which advances with troubling resolve.

There are two worlds facing off in this film: an ancestral world based on a close relationship with nature, and a hyper-sanitised and structured world where nature can only be observed through windows. While the shepherd, afflicted by a painful disease of the joints, powerlessly witnesses the decline of his profession, scientists look to the future, throwing themselves into research for a vaccine against Covid. In short, Fauna takes us to an ancient yet science-fiction world; a paradoxical world, in some respects, where species often struggle to communicate.

The film’s opening scene is especially representative of this unexpected relationship between tradition and modernity, where a little goat falls into a small ditch and can’t escape. Surrounded by nature and in a familiar habitat, the goat feels imprisoned, unable to contend with a danger it hadn’t considered. It’s a scene which is paralleled with daily life at the medical laboratory where other rituals unfold, rituals which are no longer ancestral but scientific: the act of wearing full protective suits, weighing chemical components or putting test subjects into their cages. Here, animals are used as tools for scientific knowledge, a necessary step in the move from theory to practice. With precise, nigh-on pictorial or architectural framing and delightfully suggestive editing, Fauna unites worlds which wouldn’t usually come into contact. For a moment, species seem to collide, resulting in an explosion which no-one will come out of unscathed.

Fauna is produced by Nanouk Films with the participation of Televisió de Catalunya, and is sold worldwide by London-based outfit Taskovski Films.

(Translated from Spanish)