International Competition Award: FUCK THE POLIS by Rita Azevedo Gomes

Georges de Beauregard International Award: FRÍO METAL by Clemente Castor

Special mention of the International Competition Jury: COBRE by Nicolás Pereda

French Competition Award: BONNE JOURNÉE by Pauline Bastard

Georges de Beauregard National Award: HORS-CHAMP, LES OMBRES by Anna Dubosc, Gustavo de Mattos Jahn

Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Award: DES MILLÉNAIRES D’ABSENCE by Philippe Rouy

Special mention of the Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Jury: L’AMOUR SUR LE CHEMIN DES RONCETTES by Sophie Roger

First Film Award: FANTAISIE by Isabel Pagliai

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: LOS CRUCES by Julián Galay

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

Claudia Cardinale Foundation Award: FERNLICHT by Johanna Schorn Kalinsky

Cine+ Distribution support Award in partnership with GNCR: MORTE E VIDA MADALENA by Guto Parente

Flash Competition Award: گل‌های شب ِدریا by Maryam Tafakory

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: A PRELUDE by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: CONTROL ANATOMY by Mahmoud Alhaj

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: LENGUA MUERTA by José Jiménez

Alice Guy Award: ABORTION PARTY by Julia Mellen

Renaud Victor Award: BULAKNA by Leonor Noivo

Special mention of the Renaud Victor Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

High School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the High School Jury: MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT by Assaf Gruber

The Second Chance School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the Second Chance School Jury: JACOB’S HOUSE by Lucas Kane

Audience Award: LA JUVENTUD ES UNA ISLA by Louise Ernandez

International Competition Award: FUCK THE POLIS by Rita Azevedo Gomes

Georges de Beauregard International Award: FRÍO METAL by Clemente Castor

Special mention of the International Competition Jury: COBRE by Nicolás Pereda

French Competition Award: BONNE JOURNÉE by Pauline Bastard

Georges de Beauregard National Award: HORS-CHAMP, LES OMBRES by Anna Dubosc, Gustavo de Mattos Jahn

Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Award: DES MILLÉNAIRES D’ABSENCE by Philippe Rouy

Special mention of the Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Jury: L’AMOUR SUR LE CHEMIN DES RONCETTES by Sophie Roger

First Film Award: FANTAISIE by Isabel Pagliai

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: LOS CRUCES by Julián Galay

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

Claudia Cardinale Foundation Award: FERNLICHT by Johanna Schorn Kalinsky

Cine+ Distribution support Award in partnership with GNCR: MORTE E VIDA MADALENA by Guto Parente

Flash Competition Award: گل‌های شب ِدریا by Maryam Tafakory

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: A PRELUDE by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: CONTROL ANATOMY by Mahmoud Alhaj

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: LENGUA MUERTA by José Jiménez

Alice Guy Award: ABORTION PARTY by Julia Mellen

Renaud Victor Award: BULAKNA by Leonor Noivo

Special mention of the Renaud Victor Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

High School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the High School Jury: MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT by Assaf Gruber

The Second Chance School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the Second Chance School Jury: JACOB’S HOUSE by Lucas Kane

Audience Award: LA JUVENTUD ES UNA ISLA by Louise Ernandez

Since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, Philippe Rouy has made it a personal matter. 4 Buildings Facing the Sea (FID 2012), Machine to Machine (FID 2014), Fovea Centralis (2014): his documentary trilogy dissected the catastrophe through the lens of the images produced by the company responsible for the power plant. Des millénaires d’absence extends this work through fiction, projecting thought and cinema into a new ambition, on a different scale: that of the nuclear catastrophe as an ongoing and future disaster. “One day, you will watch these images. We don’t know when. We don’t know where.” These lines, spoken in voice over at the film’s opening by a female member of the Ukishima collective, announce a project formed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster: to “film the entirety of the Japanese archipelago before radioactivity renders it definitively uninhabitable.” To produce 6,852 films, one per island: to counter the unthinkable with the impossible, to set against the endless disaster the unattainable beauty of a cinematic utopia. From the mad undertaking of this fictitious collective, Philippe Rouy constructs a poignant two-part fable of anticipation. The first part, carried by the voice of the young woman, recounts the story of the project, from its inception to its inevitable failure, unfolding its political and aesthetic stakes. Visually, hypnotically beautiful shots—given a soft, at once nostalgic and unsettling texture by the use of the camera obscura—form a film whose images seem suspended between memories of before and visions of what is to come. “SAYONARAAAA!” The second part presents a collection of “island-films,” discovered years later on a damaged hard drive, supposedly made by one of the collective’s members. Each island-film is introduced by a number and the name of the island filmed. The images now carry the crispness appropriate to a present-day archive. One imagines the repeated joy Philippe Rouy found in “capturing the thought and breath of the island before him”. A dark joy, no doubt, but one that is shared, for each shot, each fragment, glows and vibrates with the intensity of a gaze aware it is bearing witness to human microcosms on the brink of disappearance.

Cyril Neyrat

Interview

Philippe Rouy

The Fukushima tragedy inspired three of your films: 4 Buildings, Facing the Sea (2012), Machine to Machine (2013), Fovea Centralis (2014). How does Thousands of years of Absence fit into this body of work?

The trilogy dealt with the catastrophe by exploring images produced by the company responsible for the damaged power plant. Each film examined, in its own way, the issues raised by nuclear energy (hyper-visibility/invisibility, the power of matter/human powerlessness, etc.). Without that initial body of work, Thousands of years of Absence would likely not exist. In that sense, it is a continuation of that research. But its relationship to the catastrophe is different –less speculative, more sensory. It is a film of anticipation and projection, whereas the previous three were films of observation and analysis. From the outset, Thousands years of Absence was driven by a desire to think beyond the sole event of 11 March 2011. Hence the film’s hybrid nature, blending observational cinema and dreamt utopia.

The film presents a utopian project following a nuclear disaster. What was your aim?

The film documents the development and realisation of a cinematic utopia: an effort to counter the nuclear threat, in advance, through cinema. All Japanese people know how precarious human presence is on land so frequently subjected to the destructive force of nature. But the Fukushima nuclear disaster created a rift in this relationship with the landscape: everything remained intact—and yet uninhabitable, unliveable. Exile became the only option. What becomes of a landscape, of a geography rendered uninhabitable, where once rebuilding was relentless? What do we retain once a place is no longer accessible to our senses—hearing, sight, smell, touch? How does one survive that kind of absence? What can cinema offer in response? What can it capture of a landscape, the temporalities it contains, its beauty and its tensions, its sacred power or reassuring banality—before it vanishes from view for good? Thousands of years of Absence was born of all these questions, and with it, the idea of a filmed inventory of every island in the Japanese archipelago—for another world (the world of exile) and another time (the time after the catastrophe).

The first part of the film introduces the Ukishima collective’s archiving project—the “island-films”—through the voice of a Japanese woman. How did you conceive this section?

Formed immediately after 11 March 2011, this group of Japanese filmmakers—Ukishima—decides to film all 6,852 islands of the archipelago before any further nuclear accidents render the country permanently uninhabitable. The film explores this semi-clandestine group’s project, from its original concept to its implementation. One could say the first part tells the story of their idea, but not only that. I designed it as a narrative in which political and artistic questions intersect with the protagonists’ lived experience. Density and speed are key here. They reflect both the absolute urgency and the vastness of Ukishima’s project. This first part combines a process of recollection with an address to the future. I shot it using a camera obscura, giving the images their softened texture, where past and future blend. Paradoxically, this ancient technique allowed me to avoid freezing the story in a single temporality.

The second part acts as a revelation of the “island-films” previously described and theorised, via a montage of short forms. Can you tell us more?

This second part is, in a sense, the realisation of Ukishima’s project. It presents a selection of the film archives the collective has produced, following its own protocol. These are the “island-films”: for each island in the archipelago, a short film, no longer than seven minutes. They seek to preserve a trace of a world humans will have to abandon. They are fragments of visual memory from which an inaccessible world might one day be reconstructed.

The approach to image, sound and music is very different here.

This second part is more in line with observational documentary. Its aesthetic is that of contemporary digital cameras, without any particular treatment. The sound is direct, and when music appears, it arises from the shot itself. It was important to me that the narrative section and the archival display belong to clearly distinct aesthetic registers—not to oppose them, but so that they might interpenetrate through a kind of transparency.

The quiet, self-contained beauty of the “island-film” shots and landscapes is striking, especially given the film’s reference point in nuclear catastrophe. What are your thoughts?

These are images of a world before the disaster, made to outlive it. They say nothing of the catastrophe itself. But each island-film, in its simplicity, carries its own intensity—the intensity of impending loss.
While working on 4 Buildings, Facing the Sea (2012), I discovered how Japanese landscapes, in the present, condense all the temporal layers of the earth—from the pre-human to the post-human. Each earthquake, each volcanic eruption is a resurfacing of that original geology into contemporary space. Each abandoned village is a scar from a post-human world. Japan’s islands have been steadily depopulating for decades. They are slowly reverting to post-human landscapes. Even before becoming uninhabitable, parts of Japan are being deserted, rewilded. The post-human landscape Ukishima anticipates is already visible. Each island-film thus attempts to capture the present moment of a landscape in order to reveal its past and summon its future. It is a self-contained cinematic block—akin to a crossing through time.

Where do the images come from?

I filmed them all. Thousands of Years of Absence tells the fictional story of a collective utopia—that of the Ukishima group. I invented this collective, its impossible project, and its history, in order to think about and film a territory that, since 2011, has stood at the forefront of our future. Ukishima is a fictional entity created by and for the film. But part of the 6,852 island-films it seeks to archive now genuinely exists. I made them—they are part of Thousands of Years of Absence. So it’s sometimes hard for me to believe Ukishima doesn’t exist—at least not quite as it’s portrayed in the film.

Thousands of Years of Absence is a film that reflects on cinema and its powers.

Yes, that was the foundational premise of the project: to conceive of cinema as a tool capable of confronting nuclear power on equal terms –not with arrogance or delusion, but with method and resolve. So that cinema is not merely a grief-stricken witness (as with the films about Hiroshima) or a fascinated admirer (as with the mushroom cloud).
Ukishima and its outsized ambition allowed me to push that reflection further than I had imagined.
The film also taught me much about the power of fiction (a form I had never worked with before), especially its capacity to seep into reality—even to produce it. By following in the imagined footsteps of this fictional collective, by filming the Japanese islands from its imagined point of view, I found myself preceded by the fiction. I could not escape it. I could only document it—until my own bearings began to blur.

Interview by Olivier Pierre