Festival internacional Signos da Noite - Lisboa
International Festival Signs of the Night- Lisbon
 





18° Festival internacional Signos da Noite - Lisboa (6° Edição) - December 27-31, 2020

ONLINE EDITION
9

Films of Our Jury Members #2
 
Lisboa

December 31th, 2020 - January 2nd, 2021

Online


Dead Body Welcome

Kees Brienen
Netherlands / 2013 / 1:12:00

When he arrives in India, Kees Brienen hears that his friend has died. It’s a bitter welcome, taking him to his friend's remote village and a slow reconciliation with the way all life has to go. A feature based on and mixed with true events. Kees Brienen plays himself in this meditative road movie in which the protagonist, on arriving in India, finds out that the friend with whom he wanted to watch an eclipse of the sun has died. Shocked and dazed, he sets out on a long journey that takes him from chaotic urban bustle to a mountain village where he finds the body of the deceased. Helped by villagers who perform the last rites and carry the body over the hills, Brienen accompanies his friend to his final resting place. This simple story with hardly any dialogue is borne by impressions of Brienen’s state of mind and mood shots of the surroundings: from scruffy hotel rooms, bustling street life and endless roads to the serenity of the mountains, cloaked in clouds. Several encounters on the way teach him to accept the natural rhythm of life and death. Inspired by true events, something the documentary opening shot refers to. After previous experimental work, this is Brienen's first feature.