The former Future Frames mentor Denis Côté has also returned to Karlovy Vary this year to present his new film, Ghost Town Anthology. This film, which premiered at the Berlinale, was filmed on 16mm film to give it a poetic rawness. "It's a film about things that fade and fall into decay, and we wanted to invoke that impression visually as well. The actors were not permitted to wear make-up, the costumes were all muted in colour, and the film footage was not cleaned to remove dust," the Canadian film director said in explanation of his concept. He added that there is not such a big financial difference between filming on film and filming digitally, as long as the budget is right. "When using film, however, everyone is more disciplined."
Ghost Town Anthology might come across as a horror but the director intended this story, which is about a small community where motionless ghosts begin to appear, primarily as a metaphor for Québec. "There are 17 million Francophones surrounded by 450 million Anglophones. We produce a lot of culture in order to show that we exist. En masse we are strong and arrogant like the people in Anthology, but as soon as a stranger arrives we are afraid of what he wants to take from us. I'm not saying that the Québécois are any more racist than other people, but the people there are trying to survive and therefore they are afraid of everything that's different," the filmmaker believes.
Côté also explained how realism and the supernatural blend into one another in his films. "I am not a good storyteller. I'm more interested in the idea and I don't care whether it all fits. Anthology begins realistically, but I always like to stray from that sober path. It's up to you whether you choose to follow me, but if you don't then you will probably find my films weird. I like contaminating the naturalness of the first part with the unnaturalness of the second," the director described, adding that anyone interested in his earlier films should drop him a line on Facebook.
