Pacifiction

Director: Albert Serra

2020 / 165min / DCP

Catalan filmmaker Serra’s mesmerizing portrait of a French bureaucrat’s (Benoît Magimel) visit to a French Polynesian island charts the various uneasy relationships that develop between his autocratic yet avuncular High Commissioner and the Indigenous locals who operate under his faux-benevolent thumb, with anxieties recently flamed by rumors of the sighting of a submarine, suggesting the possible return of nuclear testing by the French government. Serra’s slow-building, hypnotic fever dream allows incisive social commentary about the remnants of colonialism to surface through quiet observation, jaw-dropping shots, and sheer aesthetic audacity.