This debut writing/directing collaboration of British artist Ben Rivers and American director Ben Russell is devoted to the alternative practices of (self)cognition. New pagans, members of decaying communes, black metal bands, and hermits in the Arctic form the human "landscape" in their anthropologic film, which is structured as an immersive audio and visual journey.
A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness represents a study of a possible alternative—spiritual—life framed in modern Western culture. Based on the ethnographic approach and close involvement of the writers in the life of their characters, A Spell documents the experience of faith in transcendence as the only way of survival in modern civilization.
A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
Directors Ben Rivers, Ben Russell
France, Estonia, 2013, 98 min, 18+
