Tilda Swinton, Elkin Díaz, Jeanne Balibar, Juan Pablo Urrego
Ever since being startled by a loud ‘bang’ at daybreak, Jessica (Tilda Swinton) is unable to sleep. In Bogotá to visit her sister, she befriends Agnes (Jeanne Balibar), an archaeologist studying human remains discovered within a tunnel under construction. Roaming the city in search of an explanation for the mysterious sound, en route she hears more of the world around her than ever before.
Shooting in (partly) English language and outside Thailand for the first time, visionary filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s rapturously acclaimed Memoria won the Jury Prize and was nominated for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Picking up many of the themes of his past films (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Tropical Malady, Cemetery of Splendour) – sleep, personal and collective memory, the mysteriousness of nature, the unknowability of the world around us and of our full selves – it sets up, like those films, a dreamy internal logic all its own. Shot in long, meditative takes, it’s an entrancing and perplexing cinematic experience with a sonic landscape that pulls you into its rhythms.