How can you overcome the desperate fear of losing your loved ones? Filmmaker Rafael Palacio Illingworth tries to find a way which, while raising serious questions about ethics and morality, at the same time immerses the viewer in an enchanting experience where the boundaries between fiction and reality completely dissolve.
For over an hour, Illingworth keeps you guessing as to what his film is about. The opening scenes suggest he wants merely to capture and portray his wife and children, and indeed we see aesthetically pleasing images of his photogenic partner, close-ups, her sitting, lying down, dancing, walking around the house in a foul mood, sometimes following directions.
We also see scenes of his two young daughters playing and giggling, but also of Illingworth and his wife, leaving you wondering who’s actually holding the camera.
Soon enough, the family’s cheerful intimacy takes a dark turn, in which it is suggested that wife Alma is going to die, or wishes to die, in the Swiss mountains. There follows a long period of mourning, despair, anger, resignation and, finally, acceptance. As simple as that may sound on paper, it is presented to the viewer in a fragmentary, poetic, dramatic, moving, understated and confusing manner. What has happened? Is it real? Is some of it real? Is none of it real?
There are long, beautiful shots of the misty, snow-covered mountains into which Alma may or may not have disappeared – lyrical images framed by music that is both dramatic and perfectly suited to what we see. There are almost exhibitionist scenes in which the filmmaker is filmed in all his despair, and intimate shots of the daily family routines that now take place without a wife and mother. And then there’s the search for the woman, or a woman, in a helicopter, with the voice of the pilot giving an almost clinical account of the improbability of the undertaking.
Poetic interludes convey the final thoughts of the departed lover; there is a pilgrimage to the mountains, where the filmmaker ploughs knee-deep through the snow in an almost unbearably demonstrative manner, and allows himself to be overcome by the cold, visibly almost freezing to death.
The film moves between fiction and reality, between pathos and purity, and treads a fine ethical line. For at the end there is an obvious sense that this is a re-enactment, that the filmmaker’s wife and children have taken part in a psychological experiment – an experiment in which the director subjects himself and his family to the potential consequences of profound loss.
The experiment could be regarded as selfish, perhaps even narcissistic, as Palacio Illingworth places himself and his potential feelings so squarely at the centre of attention. Yet the film works: thanks to his total commitment to the project, the acting skills of his spouse and children, the skilful, intelligent and at times humorous editing, the beauty of the compositions, the moving familiarity of the domestic scenes, and the wonderful, haunting soundtrack. It manages to immerse you in an overwhelming, emotional, deeply human and eventually purifying experience, as only art can.
Switzerland | 2026 | 70 min
Director Rafael Palacio Illingworth
Screenplay Rafael Palacio Illingworth
Photography Jeff Bierman
Editing Rafael Palacio Illingworth
Sound Oliver Rodgers, Barnaby Hall, Dominik Huber
Music Tobias Preisig
Production Rafael Palacio Illingworth, NORA films
