The New Directors section of the San Sebastián International Film Festival is a prime showcase that, year after year, brings together new and highly diverse voices from the global film scene. This year, one of those voices is Chile’s Thomas Woodroffe, who makes his feature-length debut with Erratics, one of the most radical, singular and stimulating offerings in the selection.

The film - or audiovisual poem, or alternatively a philosophical essay on decolonisation, because Woodroffe’s proposition has elements of all of the above - revolves around the figure of French geographer Paul Castelnau, an explorer who, in 1925, travelled through the Tierra del Fuego region, documenting the customs of its inhabitants. In Erratics, the ghost of this man rouses from his slumber and takes over the body of a maintenance technician played by Denis Lavant. He is a worker who is busy repairing the air conditioning in a film archive, the place that houses the reel shot by Castelnau.

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Adopting the mysterious way in which ghosts travel, we embark on a journey through the fascinating geography of Tierra del Fuego, accompanied throughout by Lavant's/Castelnau’s mesmerising voice, which weaves together reflections on the past, present and future, inspired by the thoughts that these landscapes and their inhabitants awaken in his memory. Make no mistake, Woodroffe’s film is a demanding viewing experience that requires the audience’s attention and active engagement. This may well prevent it from reaching a wider audience, but its singularity is equally likely to make it a film to be treasured by more than a few cinephiles.

Beyond the aesthetic power of the images and sounds that drift across the screen, and the intellectual and poetic richness of the narrator’s discourse, the film also derives its value from the metacinematic interplay it establishes. Castelnau’s ghost discovers that his work has been left forgotten in a basement cupboard and that the judgement passed on it from a contemporary perspective is far from favourable. By bringing his work back into the light, Woodroffe seems intent on reflecting on the enduring significance of artistic and cinematic creation, but also on its transience and fragility in the face of the inexorable passage of time.

In bringing Castelnau back to life, the Chilean filmmaker does not appear to be seeking to pay tribute to him, but neither is he setting out to vilify him. Woodroffe approaches his work with understanding and a certain degree of empathy, although this does not mean that the film refrains from criticism or from attempting, in some respects, to settle old scores. Ultimately, the true heroes are the human beings who passed before the French traveller’s camera during the first quarter of the last century. These were people portrayed through a lens of prejudice and superiority, whom Castelnau was unable to understand in all their richness and complexity, and upon whom Erratics sheds a new light – one that may perhaps herald the arrival of a more hopeful future.

Erratics is a production by Fiebre (Chile), La Belle Affaire Productions and Un Puma (Argentina). Its international sales are handled by MPM Premium.