The Lost Domain

Colour, 35 mm
France, Romania, Spain, Italy, 2004, 106 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

The filmmakers tell a story on three time planes of two men of different nationalities and fates who are connected by a love of flying. At the beginning of the film, the younger, Chilean-born Max is already 50 when he hears gunfire: soldiers have risen up against Salvador Allende’s attempt to institute democracy. The event awakens memories of another war. Back then, as a military pilot, he had taken off from London to join the fight against the German Luftwaffe. When he returned to the base he almost didn’t realize that the new instructor, a Frenchman named Antoine, is the one who taught him to fly years earlier. Max was barely just ten when, one day, a plane descended from the heavens to his Chilean village, and a man stepped out who was to become his teacher and role model. Together they toured the country’s rugged landscape, meeting villagers crossing the mountains in the hope of finding work. The pair wander onto a mysterious estate, only to lose all trace of it the next day....

About the director

Raoul Ruiz (b. 1941, Puerto Montt, Chile) studied technology and law at university in Santiago, then attended film school in Santa Fé, Argentina. Prior to this he wrote nearly 100 theatre plays (1956-62), but his first career move was as a writer in Chilean and Mexican television. In 1971-72 he was film adviser in Allende’s government. From 1973 until the fall of Pinochet’s regime he worked abroad, mainly in France. Ruiz’s work is marked by eclecticism and a diversity of genres, and he has become the most prolific (approx. 50 feature, 10 medium-length, and 40 short films) as well as the most artistically interesting Latin American filmmaker of the past 30 years. His first feature film, Three Sad Tigers (Los tres tristes tigres, 1968), took the Main Prize at the 1969 Locarno IFF, and Genealogies of a Crime (Généalogies d´un crime, 1997) was awarded with a Silver Bear at the 1997 Berlinale. He is a film theorist, teacher and man of letters.