The striking second feature from Lucile Hadžihalilović (Earwig, MIFF 2022; Innocence, MIFF 2005) plunges headlong into the mysterious dreamscape of childhood fantasies and fears.

Nicolas lives with his mother on a remote island inhabited only by women and young boys. Here, in a hospital overlooking the ocean, the women administer mysterious medical treatments to their sons. But when Nicolas spies the rotting corpse of another young boy, he begins to question his situation and surroundings.

Similarly to her husband and collaborator, Gaspar Noé – she contributed to the screenplay for Enter the Void (MIFF 2015) – Hadžihalilović demonstrates an uncanny ability for conceptualising new worlds and evoking eerily surreal grotesquerie that will come back to haunt you. In Evolution, which first screened at MIFF in 2016, her ultra slow-burn take on body-horror contrasted against magnificent underwater imagery is at once disgusting and sensual, sinister and sublime.

“Hadžihalilović is digging up the corpses of Lewis Carroll, the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, chopping them to pieces and then stitching them back as a grotesque film sculpture, but also adding her own distinctive and progressive sheen.” – Little White Lies