
HIGH LIFE
GERMANY, FRANCE, UK, POLAND, USA – 2018 – 35mm – color – 113’
Direction: Claire Denis
Screenplay: Claire Denis, Jean-Pol Fargeau, Geoff Cox, Nick Laird-Clowes
Cinematography: Yorick Le Saux
Editing: Guy Lecorne
Set design: Susan Gohsmann
Music: Stuart Staples
Costumes: Judy Shrewsbury
Cast: Robert Pattinson (Monte), Juliette Binoche (dottoressa Dibs), André Benjamin (Tcherny), Mia Goth (Boyse), Lars Eidinger (Chandra), Agata Buzek (Nansen), Claire Tran (Mink), Ewan Mitchell (Ettore), Gloria Obianyo (Elektra), Scarlett Lindsey (Willow bambino), Jessie Ross (Willow giovane), Victor Banerjee (professore), Juliette Picollot (giornalista), John Kimani Njeri (prigioniero)
Production: Laurence Clerc, Oliver Dungey, Christoph Friedel, Claudia Steffen
Productions: Alcatraz Films, Pandora Filmproduktion, The Apocalypse Films, Madants Sp. z o.o., Andrew Lauren
SYNOPSIS
Deep space. Monte is a crew member of a spaceship, made up entirely of inmates sentenced to death. They are all test subjects of a mission headed by doctor Dibs, the architect of the project in which her young prisoners participate. Monte is the inmate on whom
all the scientist’s hopes are pinned.
CRITICAL NOTE
“One of the crucial points on which Claire Denis builds High Life is precisely this lack of the catharsis of return, which makes the ‘nostos’ of these life prisoners of space vain and impossible. There is no return for these young eternauts, imprisoned in a sidereal solitude that makes them knights in blackened armour, with no dreams or nostalgia. After all, the zeroing of time is one of the constants of Claire Denis’ cinema, it is the drive to free her characters’ biography from the feeling of a time that defines its beginning and end.” (Massimo Causo, Duels.it)
AWARD
2018 San Sebastian IFF – Competition: FIPRESCI Award
2018 Ghent IFF – Competition: Best Music
2019 Indiana Film Journalists Association, US: Best Actor