The Imagina section, dedicated to experimental forms, fittingly welcomed the delegation behind the film Olivia at the Čas (Time) Cinema. Woven from evocative imagery, this impulsive cinematic fresco bridges the precise and the inexpressible, oscillating between fragile consolation and overwhelming unease. Director Sofía Petersen and producer Shaun Finneran leave it entirely up to the audience to find their own interpretations.
“I spent years with this film. It shaped my life and the lives of others. That, in itself, gives it meaning,” explained the director, who shot the film with a six-person crew in one of the southernmost parts of Argentina. Music also plays a vital role in the film. “Music has the power to pass through us. When we close our eyes, we can let ourselves be carried away by it. During production, for example, we listened to I Will Not Be Sad in This World, an album by Armenian musician Djivan Gasparyan,” explained Petersen. Finneran added that although they had originally intended to avoid piano music, they were so captivated by it that they ultimately changed their minds.
The film’s hypnotic imagery features numerous scenes shot at dawn and dusk. “It was challenging because we only had a window of about ten minutes each time. We shot on 16mm film using Ektachrome stock. The entire process was a leap into the unknown. We couldn’t review the footage during production, so until all the film had been developed in Europe, we had no idea whether the exposure had worked, or whether we had captured anything at all,” said the director, describing the technical conditions under which the crew had to power the lights from a car, as there was no electricity available in the wilderness.
“We were working with limitations, but they also brought us closer together. We were constantly together,” the pair said. Among other tasks, the producer recorded the on-set sound, though mainly for reference purposes. The film’s sound design relied primarily on post-production sound work, as the region is one of the windiest in the world – something the filmmakers deliberately incorporated into the film’s concept.
