International Competition

What would it be like to enter into the life of a complete stranger? That’s the premise of this docu-fiction, which was shot entirely on a cell phone. In order to break through the wall of urban anonymity, the filmmaker talks to various people on the streets of London, out of whom three main characters materialize: a Brazilian beauty named Sandrine, who’s looking for a husband, a drug addict named Steve, and Precious, a singer and poetess. There is no script: what begins as a vague idea gradually metamorphoses into a confusing project, and filmmaker Boris Gerrets begins to have grave doubts about his own role in all of this. When he ends up having an affair with Sandrine, he goes from observer to participant in his own film. The camera would seem to be an aphrodisiac, but the closer he gets to his subject, the more the camera gets in his way. At the same time, things happen that would never have been possible without the camera. Filming creates one moment while simultaneously destroying another. According to Gerrets, that is the paradox that defines cinema’s relationship to reality.