The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers

Ben Rivers’s most recent feature film takes Paul Bowles’s 1947 short story “A Distant Episode” as its starting point, combining elements of the unsettling tale with observational footage to create a part documentary, part fable on the illusions and ethics of cinema. Shot in 16mm against Morocco’s Atlas Mountains and Sahara Desert, the camera tracks real film director Oliver Laxe who, abandoning his own set and crew, begins to take on the role of Bowles’s protagonist, embarking on a rapid descent into misadventure and madness that gives the film a chilling change of direction.

(Ben Rivers, UK/Morocco, 2015, 98 min., 35mm)