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Leviathan

Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel
| USA
| 2012
| 87 min

This film about a fishing trawler in the North Atlantic is a clanking, creaking, shuddering sensory assault that strays far from the norms of documentary. With sparse dialogue, endlessly unexpected camera angles, and not a trace of narrative, it’s highly challenging, highly rewarding, and totally immersive. The brutality of the trawler’s mission is front and centre as great quantities of marine life spill and flop, are chopped and hacked, and the unwanted by-products get flushed back to sea. Though the beast implied by the title is not some seething, ghastly undersea giant, but the ship itself, the agenda here is only to provide an unblinking examination of life (and death) on the ocean.

Director
Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel
Producer
Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel
Premiere
Sydney Premiere
Section
Panorama
Festival Year
2013