"CONTACT" Requiem for a Word
2020 · 7m · Canada
Directed by Olivier D. Asselin
Genres: documentary, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
Language reshaped by COVID-19 is examined through the word "contact," whose meaning turned fatal as social relationships were upended during the pandemic.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A pandemic essay film about a single word feels like the most obvious, consensus-friendly premise imaginable — and yet Asselin somehow makes the formal constraint *work*, turning linguistic death into something genuinely unsettling rather than just clever.
The rigor here is exemplary: a single etymological thread pulled through cultural collapse, situated squarely in the essay-film tradition while managing to say something urgent about how language betrays us in crisis — the kind of formally disciplined work that justifies the form itself.
What elevates this beyond conceptual is the sound design choice — the way 'contact' accumulates phonetic weight and toxicity as the film progresses, a micro-decision that does the entire thematic heavy lifting without ever feeling explained.