Dau (Ilya Khrzhanovsky, 2019)

[Never Cursed]

Dau has screened at Venice to extremely polarized reviews: some critics (Peter Bradshaw) loved it, some (Siddhant Adlakha) thought it was a misfire, and some (Sonya Vseliubska) refused to even engage with it as a film and exclusively pilloried Khrzhanovsky for the various manipulations or purported abuses he committed during production. All make it sound like a mad, compelling experiment. Nanako Tsukidate didn't hate it, though, which is quite a strong endorsement.

[spectre]

I never ended up watching any of the 2020 Dau film suite, so it'll be good to go into this one fresh (assuming that it actually shows up anywhere). It sounds like the closest thing we'll get to the coherent project we were looking forward to for all those years.