If you think that your partner, your co-worker or your neighbor can at times be enigmatic, you haven’t met Jonás yet. After many years away, he returns to the countryside to start work as a stonemason in Against Nature, the feature directorial debut of Mexican filmmaker Axel Bertha that will world premiere in the Proxima competition program of the 60th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) on Thursday, July 9.
The silent protagonist is as mysterious as the movie that wanders along the cinematic edge between the physical and the spiritual worlds. After all, the KVIFF website tells us, “he opens himself up to something intangible – a force that permeates the landscape, bodies, and time itself.” The man’s enigmatic nature “stems from the dark side of humanity and from his contact with the sacred,” it adds.
Without traditional storytelling but a focus on sound design and a hypnotic visual style, Against Nature promises “an absorbing cinematic experience that explores human cruelty as part of a cycle of destruction from which humanity has yet to find a way out,” as the KVIFF website notes.
Press notes for the film hint at a looming catastrophe. Jonás eventually finds himself “enacting a drama that seems born out of nature itself, hurtling toward a stark unraveling from which humanity, since its origins, has not been able to escape.”
