2012 Cannes Film Festival Predictions: Ben Rivers & Ben Russell’s A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness

Gist: The product of two young avant-garde stars, A Spell is said to be an inquiry into the possibilities of a spiritual existence within an increasingly secular world. The experimental narrative stars musician Robert A. A. Lowe (the man behind the band Lichens), and is said to lie somewhere between fiction and non-fiction. Told in three parts, the sections will directly refer to filmmakers such as Jean Rouch, Lisandro Alonso, and Jean-Luc Godard, while the character(s) at the center of the ‘narrative’ – played by Lowe – will take the form of a hermit living near the Arctic Circle, a participant in a contemporary ‘commune’ in the Lofoten Islands, and a drummer for a neo-Pagan black metal band.

Prediction: Neither filmmaker has screened in Cannes, primarily due to the highly experimental nature of most of their past work. However, a trailer surfaced on Ben Russell’s Vimeo page last November with the attached note, ‘Coming in Summer 2012’, which has the long-in-development, relatively accessible-looking project on a perfect timeline for the Croisette. If A Spell is anything like Russell’s Let Each One Go Where He May or Rivers’ Two Years at Sea, we could imagine this collab falling nicely into a Directors Fortnight slot. It’s also very likely that they’ll wait for a more modest unveiling like Karlovy Vary or Locarno.