The Fifth Season
La cinquième saison
Belgium, Netherlands, France
2012
93 Min
Color
2.35:1
French, Flemish, Dutch
Synopsis
La cinquième saison portrays the ravages of climate change that affects the seasons, animals, people, families and even society’s morality and conscience.
A mysterious calamity strikes a village deep in the Ardennes: spring refuses to come. The cycle of nature is capsized. Relationships deteriorate. Alice, Thomas and Octave, three kids in the village, struggle to make sense of the world that is collapsing around them. A haunting tale from Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodworth, makers of Venice Lion of the Future winner Khadak and Cannes-launched Altiplano.
Director
Peter Brosens
After 13 years of working on a range of projects in Mongolia, Peter Brosens (Belgium, 1962) returns to the Andean highlands to direct his second feature film with Jessica Woodworth, ALTIPLANO. Brosens first visited Peru in 1984 where he did extensive fieldwork on the integration of invasion settlements in the city of Lima. From 1988 until 1990 he lived and worked in Guayaquil (Ecuador) studying migration from the Andes, and in 1992 he investigated epidemic forms of protest suicide in the central Ecuadorean highlands. His award-winning documentary EL CAMINO DEL TIEMPO is one of the results of this in-depth research.
Since 1992 Brosens has been working as an independent director and producer of high-profile films. Between 1993 and 1999 he produced and co-directed his internationally-acclaimed Mongolia Trilogy (CITY OF THE STEPPES, STATE OF DOGS & POETS OF MONGOLIA). Together, these innovative documentaries received 23 awards, were selected for over 100 festivals and were distributed… read more
Jessica Hope Woodworth
Born in 1971, Jessica Woodworth is a former TV writer-producer-director, now working for cinema with Belgian filmmaker Peter Brosens, whose acclaimed common works to-date are Khadak (2006) and Altiplano (2009) and whose love for ethnography she shares. Before this stage in her career Jessica Woodworth had worked for television in Hong Kong and Beijing. She shot her first theatrical movie Urga Song (1999) in Mongolia. After making “The Virgin Diaries”, a documentary filmed in Morocco, she chose to join Peter Brosens for a fruitful collaboration, still in progress. —IMDb
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Displaying 4 wall posts.
Emmma
16Oct12
Terrifying apocalyptic story. Despair makes a peaceful village turn to superstition, greed and even hate. True, some scenes were odd and confusing but I thought it went perfectly with how the villagers felt. The confusion, the despair, the lost hope, etc. Also beautiful music, images and cinematography.
affasf
30Sep12
Basically, it’s a large scale development of the René Girard’s "scapegoat mechanism" theory. Very visual, inspired by the Bruegel mise en scène (pyre of the Winter - The Mill and the Cross), loses few points betting everything on photography and overlooking the originality and pathos elements. Superstition and outdated legacies butchers on the altar of prejudice.
paolone_fr
10Sep12
symphony of images and geometries fill with pathos and cultural/antropological hints. beauty on film, and awe inspiring in its themes
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THE FIFTH SEASON (portuguese)
By Pedro Tavares on October 14, 2012
Remetente ao cinema de Roy Andersson, A Quinta Estação desconstrói em simbolismos um tempo onde o governo tomará o que resta da população, onde a tolerância é nula, onde a religiosidade leva todos… read review
The Fifth Season (Peter Brosens & Jessica Woodworth, 2012)
By marzipandildo on September 17, 2012
The fifth season is the one that lasts for a year. It’s the perpetual winter. When the plants refuse to grow and even the colours fade away.
The last chapter of an ideal trilogy about the relationship… read review
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