Israeli video artist Omer Fast enthrals with his first narrative feature, a wickedly stylish London-set thriller adapted from English novelist Tom McCarthy’s acclaimed debut novel. A large black box crashes through the sky, landing on an unnamed man’s head (an intense and brooding Tom Sturridge). He spends long months recovering, having lost all memory and sense of self. Bursts of intense déjà vu start to plague him and, after a multi-million pound settlement, he becomes increasingly extravagant in enacting fragments of memory. He buys an apartment block with specific markings; pays animal trainers to pose cats on a roof; hires actors to work as neighbours, and stages a bank robbery repetitively, obsessively. Mirroring the protagonist’s mind and with echoes of Jonathan Glazer and Shane Carruth, Fast offers a narrative that is purposefully obscure, complex and almost certainly not what it seems.
Tricia Tuttle, 59th BFI London Film
The screening is followed by a discussion with Omer Fast.
This event is part of Tate Modern collaboration with the 59th BFI London Film Festival