Director: Daniel Johansson
Running time: 5mins
Film festivals are expensive – and so they often struggle to break even, let alone make a profit. With submission fees often posing as the only dependable source of revenue that many festivals have access to, that can make granting waivers difficult.
Stories told by artists working on a shoe-string budget, or who are hit by censorship, or subjected to international sanctions, still need a platform, though. That’s why Indy Film Library’s Saturday Matinees series has returned for a sixth season.
Over the current run of matinees, IFL is showcasing work from places where monetary and legal constraints have prevented the free and easy communication of their artistic or political visions.
Our final film in this series is Kunuki. Coming from Swedish director Daniel Johansson, this silent folk horror follows the story of a lonely gardener, as he is plagued by dreams of a dead tree, and a mysterious figure.
This short feels like a strange anachronism; for the most part its high-definition technicolour looks the part by modern standards, while its hurried editing seems unwilling to allow us any time or space to think. At the same time, amid the lack of any in-world sound, the performance of the film’s nameless protagonist seems to lean more heavily on the exaggerated expressionism of early screen acting, than from the naturalistic approach favoured today.
All of this might feel odd to audiences, even underdeveloped in some senses – but as the film approaches its climax, this approach feels more and more appropriate. As the character is dragged deeper from his cultivated corner of performative nature – his garden – into something older, and more primal, it feels as though the style of the film is doing something sinister to us.
This makes the film’s ending especially impactful. While it might have been tempting to give audiences something big and over-the-top to supply us with a ‘punchline’, Johansson resists. As his character falls further and further from safety, the less he seems to resist – which is chilling, especially as, as the film has progressed, we have cared less and less about the modern filmmaking norms we would normally expect to baby us through such a film.
As with all our previous Saturday Matinees, the film will be available to view for free in full from 09:00 UK time on Saturday the 15th of February, until the end of the weekend, via our Saturday Matinees theatre page. You can give it your own score out of five there! As the film is still trying to gain access to other festivals, the page is password protected. Use the code IFLMATINEE25 to access the film.