Today, last talk of the Forum at 4pm (FID Lounge, 3rd floor of the Artplexe Canebière) and Tête-à-tête with Isabel Pagliai at 6pm (BLUM Brasserie).

For its 36th edition, FIDMarseille remains true to its mission: to spotlight independent cinema that is attentive to the echoes of the contemporary world and to the stories that reveal its fractures, both intimate and collective.

The Audience Award is open for voting until Sunday noon: among the competing films, choose your favorite!

To end this 36th edition on a high note, join us at the Petit Théâtre of La Friche la Belle de Mai from 10:30 p.m. - and until 4 a.m. - this Sunday for the Grand Closing Party!

Today, last talk of the Forum at 4pm (FID Lounge, 3rd floor of the Artplexe Canebière) and Tête-à-tête with Isabel Pagliai at 6pm (BLUM Brasserie).

For its 36th edition, FIDMarseille remains true to its mission: to spotlight independent cinema that is attentive to the echoes of the contemporary world and to the stories that reveal its fractures, both intimate and collective.

The Audience Award is open for voting until Sunday noon: among the competing films, choose your favorite!

To end this 36th edition on a high note, join us at the Petit Théâtre of La Friche la Belle de Mai from 10:30 p.m. - and until 4 a.m. - this Sunday for the Grand Closing Party!

Notes of a Crocodile, Notes of a Crocodile

Daphne Xu

100’

A Chinese woman searches across Cambodia for her ex-lover, who has disappeared mysteriously. She travels from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville, along the proposed route of the Funan Techo Canal, using the symbology of their relationship to unravel clues. The country waits apprehensively for construction to begin on the massive Belt and Road funded waterway that will displace thousands.

“My friend was 26 when she left China. She told me she wanted to be eaten by a crocodile. To die in a mythic way, like the Cambodian princess who was consumed by her lover. If she couldn’t make it out alive, that’s the way she wanted to go. Carried south by the Mekong River, out of China forever.”

Director’s statement

The crocodile itself is a mythic, unknowable figure in the story of the film. It is symbolic, signifying the primordial, the Earth, and all aberrant sexualities. It is also an animal existing in real economic and ecological material conditions in Cambodia. The main character seeks her ex-lover who has disappeared in Cambodia and has written to her about encountering crocodiles. The film explores agony and ecstasy within cycles of grief, and the haptics of illegibility in a queerness that arrives from sensuality and touch between unlikely forms. The film is inspired by the novel Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin. Deemed a cult classic, the book helped coin Lala, the term for lesbian in Chinese. The film is not an adaptation of the novel, but I am inspired by its form and effect. The book consists of fragmented diary entries and depicts a crocodile as a repressed queer individual who must put on a “human suit” to fit into society. In the film, I will create a choreography between the local and the foreign, and between the movement of women along the river. The film comments on the current China’s presence in Cambodia in Cambodia and the ongoing violence of hydropolitics, where dams and canals alter floodplains, habitats, and livelihoods beyond the borders of nation-states.

Technical sheet

  • Production:
    Anti-Archive (Daniel Mattes : daniel.mattes@antiarchive.com)
    Lumieria Pictures (Mengchu Hu : hmchuchu@gmail.com)
  • Budget:
    600 000 €
  • Acquired budget:
    40 000 €
  • Funds:
    Hubert Bals Development Fund
  • Shooting countries:
    Cambodia, China