HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH Discovery

Ida (Angeliki Papoulia of DOGTOOTH) leads a crew of five men on a sailing yacht. After becoming fascinated with the French Foreign Legion at a port in Marseille, she sets sail for Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria – the Legion’s historical headquarters – on a mystical journey across the Mediterranean Sea. In its most enchanting, hallucinatory moments, HUMAN FLOWERS OF FLESH beats like the pulse of the sea, breathing along the ebb and flow of its waves. Shot by director Helena Wittmann herself, the film is brimming with organic textures, traversing like a lucid dream through long leisurely swims in the sun, murmuring conversations on deck and a plunge among underwater lifeforms. With its oblique political underpinnings lingering gently but not forgotten, we slowly come to a mutual understanding of its unusual wavelength. –Anna Li