The Machinist

Colour, 35 mm
Spain, 2003, 102 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

Trevor Reznik, the hero of this existential thriller, is a lonely, retiring young man. Apart from the fact that he appears a little haggard, he looks like thousands of ordinary young men who come home from work in the evening, have a chat with the waitress at a café, satisfy their most basic desire from time to time by means of a professional - and then go home to sleep. But Trevor can´t sleep. For a year now he´s been suffering from a form of sleeplessness which has nothing in common with the banal insomnia which forces you to brew the first coffee at daybreak. The physically and mentally exhausted young man has for months been moving within a nightmare from which he cannot wake up. The key factors at play are a terrible accident which Trevor caused (or maybe not?), his colleagues at work, his favourite call girl Stevie, the mysterious Ivan and the sympathetic waitress Marie. Is Trevor the victim of some strange game - or is he himself a callous manipulator?

About the director

Brad Anderson (b. 1964, Madison, Connecticut) studied film with a focus on ethnography at Bowdoin College in Brunswick in Maine and film production in London. His first film, Darien Gap, was shown successfully at the Sundance Film Festival in 1996. In 1997 Variety magazine featured him as one of the ten most promising independent directors in America. His reputation was confirmed a year later with his next film, Next Stop Wonderland, also screened at Sundance; at the festival in Deauville it took the Grand Prix and the Audience Award. His subsequent films, Happy Accidents (2000) and Session 9 (2001), also attracted attention. At Sundance this year he won deserved praise for his industrial psychological thriller The Machinist.