Dead Slow Ahead

Winner of the Special Jury prize at Locarno 2015, Mauro Herce’s slow epic transforms a commercial freighter and the landscapes it traverses into a truly surreal experience. Tracing the ship’s journey from Ukraine and New Orleans, time eventually decelerates to the point of abstraction, the sound of its machinery creating an otherworldly atmosphere. The immaculate, solitary visuals—which have the power to distort sights as familiar as a sunrise—demand to be seen inside a theater. More incredibly still, Herce manages to deliver slices of the Filipino crew’s lives—and then effortlessly transition back to the alien.