Death Does Not Exist

Thinking of his children’s future, Félix Dufour-Laperrière (Archipelago, 2021) experienced profound doubt and fear. Thus he created Death Does Not Exist, an urgent film in times of growing global inequality, social injustice and rising authoritarianism.

What to do, when you see all that happening around you? Hélène’s friends argue that a violent attack on an ultra-rich family could provide the required revolutionary spark. Although she has her doubts, she nevertheless takes part in the armed raid. At the moment of truth, however, she freezes when an elderly woman in a wheelchair looks her straight in the eye. This costs her friend Marc his life, in a gruesome way. Hélène turns around and flees into the forest.

She is followed there by her revolutionary comrade Manon. Or maybe by her ghost; from the moment they enter the forest, the boundary between reality and magical imagination becomes blurred (not unlike in Stalker – one of Dufour-Laperrière’s favourite films). Colours, visions and animals all represent Hélène’s inner turmoil, in a spellbinding mix of tranquil scenes and hallucinatory (and hand-drawn) transformations.

This provocative film, with its subtly mesmerising soundtrack and its monochrome characters often blending into their surroundings, gradually abandons all certainties, until only one, extremely pressing moral dilemma remains: the impossible choice between violence and inaction in the face of a dangerously unhinged capitalism. Will you fight? Or rather flee? Won Best Feature Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.