The aphotic zone is the deep and dark region encompassing most oceanic waters, into which light hardly penetrates. The Lithuanian artist and filmmaker Emilija Škarnulytė has made a hypnotic film, somewhere between documentary and imaginary account, in which the oddness of the underwater world is confronted with the sonic landscape of a distant civilisation.
In Brasília, the modern capital of Brazil, an anteater is found dead by the side of a road, a boa constrictor wanders across the suburbs, and foxes prowl vacant streets. Meanwhile, in the city zoo—home to hundreds of displaced and rescued wild species—the animals look back at us humans.
Around the sleeping bodies, some presences occupy the architecture and move around the space in obscure activities: nothing of their actions is visible to us, except in the fragments in which the image shows itself under the flashlight. Monelle is a circular film without any narrative or hierarchy, without a beginning or an end, and it circumscribes a place of promiscuity and ambiguity between the different formats used—35mm and CGI animation—and the approaches of two opposites film attitudes—the structural cinema and the horror genre.
