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Feeling like a film by Andre Tarkovsky or Piotr Szulkin, Dmitry Moiseev's ENCOUNTERS feels like a film only a decaying society could produce. That it comes from Russia, a land currently seeming to crawl back into the "glory days" of the Soviet Union explains a great deal.
In a world where aliens have landed, a nurse takes a job ministering to a sick alien. The handlers want then kept alive because they are extracting something from them.
The world is broken. Nothing is clean. Garbage is everywhere. When our heroine has to go into a room filled with water she doesn't put on boots but wraps herself in plastic wrap. Calling it Dystopian isel being kind.
On some level this is a funny. There is something absurd about it all. On other levels this isn't funny with the exploitation of the aliens and the people caring for them clearly laid out. This isn't satire but straight on political commentary of the sort you can only get in science fiction or other fantastical genres. AT times watching the film I was kind of shocked that Russian officials allowed this film to be made since it seems to be saying pointed things about the Putin Regime.
To be honest this film rocked my world. I have been so starved of meaty science fiction of late that I thought that people forgot how to make films like this. I love films like this that blow your mind on the first time through to the point that you're not sure how to discuss it, but know you'll have a better chance after the next couple of times through.
Honestly I need a few more times through this film before I can discuss it- until the make an effort to see it.
Godbless Fantaspoa for screening it and putting it on my radar.
One of my favorite films of 2024
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