Le Pays

This medium-length film, simple in principle and appearance, tells the story of two immigrants, Chady and David, who work as sailors on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. What begins initially as a documentary-like chronicle with a parsimonious pace about a friendship based on the feeling of uprootedness between the two protagonists mutates into an enigmatic imaginary journey through the borders between waking and dreaming, fiction and reality, past and present. Le Pays, by the very young, multi-award-winning Swiss filmmaker Lucien Monot, is a hypnotic and highly unconventional tale about the component of fabulation that appears in so many areas of our lives: our past, our aspirations or even the country and culture to which we belong. Lake Léman, the natural border between Switzerland and France and a setting that featured prominently in Monot's previous short film, Les histoires vraies (2017), also serves as the ideal landscape for a story that moves on the boundaries of dreaming and waking. The delicate Super8 texture of the film helps to create a watery, dreamlike atmosphere that transcends the screen and envelops the audience in a captivating and mysterious experience. GABRIEL DOMÉNECH