Jan 23
International Film Forum: FRANCOFONIA
Francofonia (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2015, France/Germany/Netherlands, 88 min.) – Diane Nemec Ignashev
“With this sophisticated, complex and thoroughly absorbing film, Aleksandr Sokurov has had another night at the museum reverie, a cine-prose poem or animated installation tableau, weaving newsreel footage with eerie floating images above the streets of contemporary Paris – presumably filmed with a drone – and dramatised fantasy scenes.
Thirteen years after Russian Ark, that renowned single-take movie journey through the Hermitage museum in St Petersburg, Sokurov has now alighted on the Louvre in Paris. Francofonia has all sorts of wayward digressions and perambulations around the idea of French and European culture, and the role of the museum in conserving art and promoting the idea of what it means to be human.” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)