Phantom Valley
2020 · 20m · USA
Directed by Nina Kotyantz
A young drifter finds temporary shelter and work with an old medicine woman in desolate countryside, where the worlds of his dreams and waking reality increasingly bleed together.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Kotyantz draws from Tarkovsky and the landscape films of the American Southwest to make something genuinely unhurried — a drifter story where the land itself is the antagonist.
Drifter and medicine woman, dreams bleeding into landscape, Picnic at Hanging Rock comp — this is a familiar enough mode that everything depends on the cinematography. 403 page, betting on atmosphere.
Shooting the American West as sacred, unknowable terrain that initiates rather than frames its story is the move — Picnic at Hanging Rock and Under the Skin are heavy comparisons. Kinoscope page is locked; I'd watch with cautious enthusiasm.
Festivals
- Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival 2020