The legend of Faust is mixed with Oaxacan myths in a meditation on the borders of reality and the limitations of a rational perspective on the world.
When Fernando and Alberto decide to expand their small seaside bar, they come across stories about a powerful witch, who once resided in their neighborhood. Locals bring up stories of magic, shapeshifting, and strange rituals. One day, the protagonists meet a Frenchman looking for shelter and willing to exchange it for his shadow—his only possession.
A strange mix of fiction and documentary, Fausto is not so much an adaptation of the medieval German legend about a scientist who sold his soul to the devil (although the film has clearly been influenced by Goethe’s play, and Gertrude Stein’s opera libretto Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights), as a meditative discussion of the limitations of the Western worldview. Reason alone cannot explain the world we live in: something always slips away from rational analysis, as Andrea Bussmann shows in her study of the folklore in Oaxaco state, where European legends of the colonial age have mixed with Mexican mythologies, and nature has remained unchanged for hundreds of years.
Fausto
Andrea Bussmann
Canada, Mexico, 2018. 70 min. 18+
