Drift

Director: Helena Wittmann

2017 / 97min / DCP

Wittmann’s lulling, trance-like, seductive first feature is a film of journeys, discoveries, and meditative moments that serve to re-enchant the natural world they survey, in particular the eternal mysteries of the oceans. First picking up with two female friends, a German and an Argentinian, passing a weekend together on the coast of the North Sea, Drift proceeds to follow each on their individual itineraries: one to return to her family in South America; the other, on a seafaring trip that includes stops in the Azores and Caribbean. A discourse on time and space written in precise, poetic images, showing the pronounced influence of Michael Snow, Chantal Akerman, and other masters of structuralist cinema.