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• Cineuropa
• interview, film review, trailer, 1 interview, 1 video

Year of production : 2022

Director(s) : Albert SERRA
Writer(s) : Albert SERRA
Cast : Benoit MAGIMEL, Sergi LOPEZ, Cécile GUILBERT

Albert Serra sets off for Tahiti, whose landscapes in his latest movie resemble a dream-like land, a space combining a sweet dream and a suffocating nightmare. Pacifiction is overpowering from the very first scene - a long traveling shot depicting a red-hot sky looming over the ocean and a harbor full of container ships. Their overwhelming presence is one of the links between the Polynesian island and the world of our civilization. Or rather, what is left of it. The guide to this lost paradise is the High Commissioner of the Republic De Roller (Benoît Magimel), managing the archipelago on behalf of the French government. Dressed like Fitzcarraldo in a spotless white suit, he talks a lot and tries to be an effective mediator between the empire and the local population, among whom rumor has it that the nightmare still alive in Polynesia – French nuclear tests – is about to return. Pacifiction is total and hypnotic cinema. Like the entire output of the Catalan director, it is permeated with irony, bitter romanticism and an atmosphere of decadence. The story is full of movie references (e.g., to Fassbinder and F.F. Coppola), and takes an egotistical, existential and political form to become a Chandler-like detective story.