COMPETITION A documentary that explores the human body in a clinical yet intimate way. It all began with a series of 16th century books on human anatomy that provide a detailed study of the inside of our bodies. Here, the camera travels through five hospitals, in Paris, and the work of surgeries and autopsies that take place there, in an immersive and sensory tour of our literal and vulnerable core, in an expressionist abstraction.
How far can the documentary go? Everywhere of course, we have seen it since Leviathan (Grand Prize IndieLisboa 2013) and Caniba (IndieLisboa 2018), the camera of Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor knows how to go everywhere. For this new film, she sneaks into the craziest of intimacies: the interior of the human body. Accompanying the gestures of surgeons, it sneaks into the hearts of the people filmed: into their skulls, their viscera, their pupils. More than the infinitely small, the filmmaking duo here films the infinitely secret, while giving it epic dimensions. Thus unveiled on the big screen, the interior of the body becomes human, a landscape full of shadows and mazes.
De humani corporis fabrica is a sensory film that follows its own breadcrumb trail through different registers: from science fiction to pathetic drama, from horror to social film through abstract cinema. Reporters Without Cinematographic Borders, the two filmmakers defy the overly strict definitions of documentary. Their camera goes far in the literal sense (sinking into the flesh without respite) as well as in the figurative sense, by its astonishing audacity. (Mickäel Gaspar)
