Genre Country Director Actor

La Antena

aka The Aerial, Esteban Sapir, 2007

Star Review

Surreal, playful and elegantly artful, this visually arresting, near-silent piece of light-footed expressionism looks like a 1920s Fritz Lang film, created through state-of-the-art digital camerawork and handfuls of industrial-strength hallucinogens.

The story follows the adventures of an inventor and his decidedly offbeat family as they try to foil the plans of the sinister Mr TV, a television station owner whose broadcasts have literally struck their whole city dumb. Mr TV has appropriated the one citizen who still has the ability to articulate her thoughts (through song) into one of his television shows, but his intentions towards her and her similarly-gifted but eyeless son are less than honourable.

However you read it, this is confident filmmaking, unashamedly full of awestruck wonderment for the spectacle of fantasy storytelling, which aims to delight as well as fly the flag of experimentalism. As such, it is likely to appeal to children weaned on CGI and Xbox as much as it will to the committed enthusiast of cinema history.

Julian Upton on 14th August 2008

View all 77 of Julian Upton’s reviews

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