Mare’s Nest

Fiction, documentary, poetry and philosophy intertwine in this hybrid film about a young girl roaming a world without adults. We follow Moon on a journey that takes her from the Stone Age to the future—along coasts and wastelands, into ideas and hypotheses (from Plato’s cave to Darwin’s theory of evolution), and across communities, language, rituals and play.

Above all, this is a journey of encounters. In a black-and-white sequence, Moon meets a silent sage and her interpreter. In an elliptical conversation based on Don DeLillo’s one-act play, The Word for Snow, they discuss the value of language in a world where meaning has become contested.

Director Ben Rivers has explained in interviews that his starting point for the film was the question of what kind of world we are leaving for our children. Although his film is suffused with concern for the future, the playfulness of the children and their genuine curiosity about the world means it’s never heavy or depressing. They face the uncertainty of what is to come with a disarming smile.