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Sophia Antipolis

Virgil Vernier
FRA 2018
98 min
V'18

Virgil Vernier’s follow-up to MERCURIALES (2014) is similarly set in a peculiar contemporary “non-place” zone of France. Sophia Antipolis is a techno-industrial park on the periphery of the tourist centers of the French Riviera. Created in the 1970’s and 1980’s, it was modeled on Silicon Valley in California as a massive architectural anomaly built to bring a different kind of industry to the region. Amid this backdrop, a series of tangentially-related sequences and narratives vignettes play out: women consult with a plastic surgeon; a young man gets inducted into a militia; a woman goes canvassing for the first time with an end-of-the-world spirituality cult she’s considering joining; another woman, Sophia, is already dead, having been killed in a warehouse fire under mysterious circumstances. Relying on non-professional actors, and the dull weight of the geographical setting, SOPHIA ANTIPOLIS unfolds as an assembly of everyday seeking and wish mis-fulfillment. With several tonal shifts along the way, playing with humor, boredom, and grim sadness, the films cyclically-arranged tales build up to a deep existential sorrow for the daily organization of contemporary existence. (Rachael A. Rakes)

Credits
  • Dewi Kunetz - Kim
  • Sandra Poitoux - Samantha
  • Hugues Njiba-Mukuna - Christophe
  • Bruck - Tarik
  • Lilith Grasmug - Léna
  • Virgil Vernier
  • Simon Roca
  • Tom Harari
  • Jean Collot
  • Olivier Viellefond
  • Simon Apostolou
  • Charlotte Cherici
  • Florence Catusse
  • Pauline Croce
Kazak Productions

MK2 Films

DCP
col
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