ELSE

description

Anx has just met Cass when a mysterious virus breaks out: everywhere, people’s bodies are merging with objects. Stuck in their apartment, the couple must face this dreadful situation.

A romance blossoms between an introvert (Anx, Matthieu Sampeur) and a confident woman (Cas, Edith Proust), but their relationship faces a threat when a strange epidemic causes the infected to merge with their surroundings, trapping the couple in a shapeshifting nightmare. Inspired by the aesthetic of Björk's “body fantasy”, the boundary between the natural and the artificial disappears. Developed over 13 years, including the 2007 short of the same name, ELSE has won multiple awards on the genre film festival circuit: Best Director and Picture at Screamfest 2024 and Directorial Revelation and Best Special, Visual or Makeup Effects at Sitges Film Festival 2024. Above all, ELSE is a story of two characters behind closed doors, with a fundamentally different, minimalist, poetic aesthetic.

OFFICIAL SELECTION
Toronto International Film Festival 2024
Fantastic Fest 2024
Sitges Film Festival 2024

DIRECTOR'S BIO
Thibault Emin grew up in Paris with a love of science fiction. After studying philosophy, he decided to become a film director. At the passing of his mother when he was 19, he immersed himself in cinema; Kitano, Lynch and Cronenberg became his adoptive family. His philosophical study of sci-fi cinema led him to found the metamorphic doctrine that would become the driving force behind the ELSE project. He directed fiction and documentaries at the University of Paris 8, then at La Fémis (including the short film ELSE), learned about acting, taught cinema, discovered poverty, and developed the ELSE project over 13 years.