MEMORIES OF THE BEYOND
Alicia Mendy
Switzerland
Casamance, Senegal 1980. After brutally losing his mother, Elizo discovers he can visit her in the afterlife. However, these journeys are slowly destroying his life and memories.
SYNOPSIS
Since the brutal death of his mother, Elizo is approached by demons — otherworldly spirits feared and respected as bridges between life and death. He isolates himself in his grief, unable to talk with his sister Dieynaba about their loss or to see her pain. When Elizo discovers that the demons can transport him to the afterlife to reunite with his mother, he does not resist the temptation to return over and over again. However, as he clings on to his last memories of his mother, he slowly realizes the price he has to pay.
INTENTION
Many of my family stories, drowned in the displacements of war and exile, were closed by silence. This story is a mixture of the relatives I knew and never knew, and those of my brother and father, both of whom never had the chance to say goodbye to their mother. Through fantasy, I want to create a complex emotional journey. We all take refuge in our imaginary worlds and fantasies, so it is this secret world, so precious, that I want to portray. Through mourning and the mythologies of Casamance (southern Senegal), my character’s journey is one of self-transcendence. An exploration in the form of an out-of-body journey to the depths of our unconscious, to confront its darkest recesses. With this film, I would like to portray human beings and populations that do not exist in the world of genre cinema. The mental escapism through which our minds so easily escape in fantasy-coded narratives proves the extent to which our world and its perception cannot be summarized and translated solely in terms of “reality”. It is useful, but incomplete. We need tales, timeless, transcendent stories, to heal ourselves and shift our sometimes too rigid view of reality.
DIRECTOR
Alicia Mendy
Alicia Mendy is a Swiss-Senegalese filmmaker. Her graduation film Beutset, a sci-fi dystopia, won Best School Film at Winterthur and Best Director at Curta Cinema Rio de Janeiro. Her short Memories of the Beyond was selected for Focus Script at Cannes. Also a composer, she received Best Score at Diagonale for Girls and Gods.
PRODUCER
Rhea Plangg
Rhea Plangg is a Swiss producer. With a background in political science, she develops films centered on female* political voices and genre. Her productions have screened at CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, TIFF, San Sebastián, Cannes and Black Star. An alumna of Rotterdam Lab, Indaba and LIM, she founded Lido Pictures in 2022.
Genre
Fantasy
Length
20 min
Language
Manjak, Créole
Shooting location
Senegal
Production company
Lido Pictures (Switzerland)
Estimated budget
€ 200.000 - € 250.000
Secured funding
Zurich Film Fund - € 37.000, Cinéforom - € 35.000, Producer's reinvestment € 10.000, TV RTS - € 10.000
Looking for
Coproducers, VFX/ Post-Production, Sales, Distribution