"Can all people who aren’t acting leave?" The hardships of being a director are tangible in the latest Ben Rivers film, which is just as mysterious as its title (a reference to a work by Paul Bowles). Rivers was present in Morocco’s Atlas mountains on the sets of Oliver Laxe’s Herzog-inspired production Las Mimosas, and there he primarily documented frustration, hiatus and inertia.
It is only when Laxe doesn’t see the point of filming any more (beware: we are slowly moving into fictional territory) that The Sky Trembles... becomes more than a film in a film and a film about film. Rivers then puts Laxe through a new agony, based on Bowles’ short story A Distant Episode. The Spanish director is kidnapped by a group of nomads who sell him to a different tribe as a gleaming, dancing object. It is an unthinkable action that reflects as much on the difficult relationship between man, nature and film as on the previous difficult scenes behind the scenes.
- Director
- Ben Rivers
- Country of production
- United Kingdom
- Year
- 2015
- Festival Edition
- IFFR 2016
- Length
- 96'
- Medium
- 35mm
- Languages
- Arabic, French, Spanish, English
- Producer
- Jacqui Davies
- Production Company
- Artangel
- Sales
- Jacqui Davies Limited.
- Cinematography
- Ben Rivers
- Editor
- Benjamin Mirguet, Ben Rivers
- Sound Design
- Philippe Ciompi
- Cast
- Oliver Laxe
- Website
- http://theskytrembles.com