With a world premiere in the Locarno Film Festival‘s Pardi di Domani selection of short and medium-length films, the filmmakers behind “Piluk” saw the production as a chance to tell a story with the simplest possible textures: pencil, paper and the human voice.
Produced by Marc Bertrand and Jelena Popović of the National Film Board of Canada and directed by multidisciplinary artists and longtime friends Marc Séguin and Elisapie Isaac, “Piluk” was created from over 8,000 drawings using pen, charcoal and pencil and accompanied by a soundtrack of throat-singing.
‘Piluk’
Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada
“I have the most immense respect for things that can be said with pencil and paper,” Séguin says in an interview with Variety. “Given all the technology that surrounds us, I still think that not all has been said with paper and pencil. So we wanted to go back to that craftsmanship. I mean, if Eli’s on stage or she records something for this film, it’s her voice. We didn’t want machines to be involved or ask AI to get involved as well, we wanted to just draw it the old-fashioned way.”
