VIOLET New Auteurs

A regular day at the local shopping mall turns into a hellish trauma when 15-year-old Jesse witnesses his friend’s murder. As he tries to readjust to the world, spending time with his family and riding the streets and nearby forests with his BMX biker friends, Jesse experiences grief less as a lightning bolt and more as a slow creep of emotion, permeating his every action while hardly registering at surface level. Bas Devos’ stunning, enigmatic directorial debut, shot on both 65mm and the Alexa, carves out a visual identity all its own. Long takes, such as that of a strobe-lit concert or a forest with BMX bikers springing in and out of frame, have a strange, unsettling beauty, none more so than the film’s final shot, which is expertly executed, suspenseful and mysterious.