An emissary from the Crown gets lost in a forest. He is taken in by a family who are waiting for a father they fear dead, until a figure shrouded in death appears, claiming to be the long-awaited patriarch. The myth of a vampire figure emerges and is realised within this family, where our unsuspecting Marquis d’Urfé is found. Artifice and theatricality are the threads that sew together this fascinating adaptation of the vampire’s folkloric cousin, the Balkan vourdalak.
In an atmosphere that is both gloomy and burlesque, we follow a Vourdalak in puppet form. Originally written by Aleksey Tolstoy, a distant relative of the author of War and Peace, the story of Vourdalak leaves us equally unsettled by the singular presence of this figure who transforms an already strange family into something even more sinister. Travelling down less explored paths in fiction, this tale introduces us to a family waiting for their patriarch. However, what they receive is not the father they knew, but a vampire-like figure, rooted in a myth that few still believe in. The impasse deepens when the victims of this unusual being tend to be those closest to him. Now adapted for the cinema by Adrien Beau, this story plunges viewers into a suspense between horror and tragicomedy, questioning the nature of family ties and the limits of what is real. (Jéssica Pestana)
