Aska
2021 · 15m · Canada
Directed by Clara Milo
Tones: contemplative, dark, mythic
Two young sisters brave a decaying landscape to deliver their dead mother's ashes to a mythical fire serpent living inside a volcano, hoping to prevent catastrophic destruction of their world.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Milo shot a myth on location in Iceland on a $15,000 budget without a script, in black and white, in a language she doesn't speak — and the film earned every frame of its audacity.
Two sisters delivering mother's ashes to a fire serpent in an Icelandic volcano. Fourteen minutes, black and white, non-scripted. The Iceland-landscape-as-myth conceit is the entire pitch. Beasts of the Southern Wild comparison is overreach. Could be beautiful, probably slow.
Clara Milo shoots Iceland in black-and-white non-scripted with two sisters delivering ashes to a fire serpent — the real volcanic landscape doing the narrative work is the Beasts of the Southern Wild move in a colder palette.
Festivals
- Seminci (Valladolid International Film Festival) 2021