Krisis: A Poetic Drama of Finding Life

Luca Mazzara’s 11-minute Krisis situates itself in the dreamscapes created in the shadow of chronic illness. Following a woman’s path out of it and into a full relationship with the natural world, the film takes a poetic, surrealist approach to the out of body experience of a body betrayed by its failing.

Zoe, played by Mara Calvo, suffers both in her mind and her body. The bleakness is compounded by her utter isolation. There is no one to be witness to her life in all its aspects, high and low, real and intangible. An image of her scrubbing the grime out of the tile grout returns intermittently, metonymically representing her pain of living. The imagery of the poem itself is evocative and sometimes the film strains to catch up. However, complementing it are repeated sounds of whale calls and ocean waves. There is a different way, they seem to say. As Zoe begins a wondrous journey for herself when she heeds the call, that new and different way opens up its possibilities to her.

Gianfranco Migliorelli serves as the voiceover narrator—Zoe never speaks. The effect of the choice in combination with the poetic-surrealist style is that we are simultaneously offered an omniscient view of her while being utterly outside, ultimately mere spectators who may interpret and speculate but not hear and feel. The film uses referential symbolism like Zoe bearing a wooden cross up a hill to reinforce meaning in lieu of knowledge as feeling and to encourage its viewer to look for those meanings within its style.

The piano based background score is one of the film’s highlights, a serene yet stirring composition which shoulders a bridge between the imagery and Zoe’s interiority. As the film draws to its conclusion, it shows Zoe closer than ever to liberation, far closer to the exhilaration of Jack-Rose at the bow of the Titanic than the tragedy of Jesus on the crucifix. The poses are the same but meanings diverge in wide directions, and Zoe has found the one that leads to a relieved life with dignity.

Watch Krisis Short Film Trailer