Nicolas Rey

In 1998 it seemed impossible to Balagura to make films in the Ukraine without becoming a slave to television; he therefore left for Italy, the "country of culture". With no immigration papers, with a wife and two children, the less agreeable realities of his situation soon caught up with him. In 2004, armed with a basic mini-DV camera borrowed from a friend, with a casual acquaintance as camera operator, he shot 'Pausa Italiana'. From a small village in the Abruzzi region, he observed the reality surrounding him; he also turned the camera upon his own status as migrant, a situation no documentarist could capture. He allies precise recordings with a fragmentary narrative of literary quality, giving the film a particular quality: auto-fiction and ethnography intersect to form an Aristotelian poetic, avoiding separation between self and other, observer and observed, the real and the cosmic

From the seascapes of the North African Mediterranean to the streetscapes of Paris, this personal 16mm essay film explores the idealism and hard realities of departure and arrival. Stories of the post-revolution Tunisian diaspora in France, who “burned the sea” to leave, only to discover a new form of confinement in their liberation, provide a powerful meditation on personal revolution and freedom, and the compromises that face those whose mobility is a double-edged sword.

Portrait of experimental filmmaker Nicolas Rey.

Nine short, individually titled reels of colour 16mm film, which are presented in a random order determined before each screening. Drawing on a text by German philosopher Günther Anders, the film is an imaginary documentary about Molussia, a fictional totalitarian country that Anders invented to represent the dystopia of fascism.

Rey's first feature film begins as a stylish quasi-verité documentary about everyday life in a modest French ski resort. Gradually the film's attention shifts and discovers the dominant presence of the aluminum industry in the area steadily reshaping the region and threatening the resort itself. Shot on grainy 16mm treated with extreme photochemical techniques, the fable about industry and capitalism is an exploration of landscape as a hidden set of signifiers of power. - Harvard Film Archive

Tired of life, Martin returns to live with his romantic father and idealist little brother Gabriel.Martin will try hard to warn Gabriel about falling in love until Mathilde - a gambler - enter the picture...