Christelle Lheureux's 80,000 Years Old is showing exclusively on MUBI starting November 3, 2021 in the series Brief Encounters.
This film arose from a desire to continue experiments with two-screen video installations I carried out a few years ago, when I was more a visual artist than a filmmaker—this time armed with my experience as a screenwriter. I wanted both to juxtapose shots / reverse shots where two characters speak to each other in continuous time, without editing, leaving the viewer to choose the editing by looking at both of them, but also to explore the two screens to accompany Céline's path, which navigates between different times: the present of a weekend in Normandy, her musings, her memories and her mental images. The spectator also finds himself between two realities, two juxtaposed times. This form also worked well with the idea of pentimento in painting and narrative digression: after having thought of running into a childhood friend, Céline really runs into him, but there are two possibilities for reunion which follow one another. The film does not deliver any tangible truth, but a series of possibilities with which the spectator navigates and constructs his own truth. My desire for fiction is rooted in exploring the possibilities for storytelling that a situation offers to us, less so in its resolution, where morality is often inevitable. My conscious and unconscious influences for this project range from Alain Resnais (Je t'aime, je t'aime, 1968) to Hong Sang-soo (Hill of Freedom, 2014).