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Peter Liechti’s ‘The Sound of Insects’ Wins EFA Award

A Hot Docs, Silverdocs, Rotterdam and Karlovy Vary selected doc that has been mentioned in some programs as an Into the Wild-like in nature has won European Documentary Film Award’s 2009 Prix ARTE prize (for Best Doc).

Eric Lavallée

Published on October 13, 2009

A Hot Docs, Silverdocs, Rotterdam and Karlovy Vary selected doc that has been mentioned in some programs as an Into the Wild-like in nature has won European Documentary Film Award’s 2009 Prix ARTE prize (for Best Doc). Peter Liechti’s The Sound of Insects — Record of a Mummy was cited for “it’s skillful exploration of minimalist means to create an extraordinary
visual story between life and death“. I’ll would have made a call out for a screener copy, but I’ll be catching the doc at RIDM Montreal next month – the trailer below basically demonstrates how you can do a lot with very little.

Based on the novella “Until I am a Mummy” by Japanese writer Shimada Masahiko, itself based on the real-life journal of a man in a remote forest who committed suicide by self-starvation. A hunter stumbled over his mummified remains in a makeshift tent.

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Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).