Clara Pais

Phantom Islands is an experimental film that exists at the boundary of documentary and fiction. It follows a couple adrift and disoriented in the stunning landscape of Ireland’s islands. Yet this deliberately melodramatic romance is constantly questioned by a provocative cinematic approach that ultimately results in a hypnotic and visceral inquiry into the very possibility of documentary objectivity.

With free eyes, an open heart, good friends and a handful of luck, Gurcius Gewdner revisits some of his adventures of the past five years, survives the relentless Russian winter and asks the following question: How far can an underground Brazilian film go?

In this film a lone figure wanders through a mysterious wilderness while hounded by spectres and unseen forces. This is a solitary journey, a path of exile and hardship that leads beyond the abyss to where reality loses its mask of concreteness and shows its true fluid face.