Three kilometers to the end of the world: discover in the cinema the film that shook the Cannes Film Festival

For the authenticity of his story, inspired by so many news…

17-year-old Adi spends the summer in his native village in the Danube Delta in Romania. One evening he was violently attacked in the street. The next day, his world is completely turned upside down. His parents don’t look at him like they used to, and the apparent peace of the village is falling apart.

Unfortunately, inspired by many novelties, the story of “Three Kilometers to the End of the World” seems to depart from fiction to capture, in all its rawness, modern violence. Homophobia and intolerance create a proliferation of this intimate drama set in the Romanian countryside, without director Emmanuel Parvu choosing to show its starting point: the public lynching of a homosexual teenager.

While the “causes” (two boys a little too close for the local youth’s taste) and the aftermath of the lynching in particular serve as the starting point for this heart-wrenching intrigue, the crime itself is never presented. Bias defended by the filmmaker: “I wanted the audience to imagine rather than showhe explains. If I take an attack, I impose my point of view, my opinion. While playing the ellipse, the audience will fill in the missing images with their imagination, and will be able to experience completely personal emotions.“

For its sublime yet subtle staging

Accompanying the quasi-documentary aspect of his story, which is inspired by many very real events, the filmmaker Emmanuel Parvo chose an elaborate staging, as if separated from all artifice, to better capture the inevitable family tears, and then the social one, that divides his characters.

First, the choice of a static camera that refuses to accompany the characters in their movements and instead tries to capture them from a certain distance. “This is my first live camera film. Previously, my production was a hand-held camera.

Choosing this bias really scared me. My father was a very famous photographer in Romania. I grew up surrounded by photos that are essentially static and make it feel like I can see absolutely everything you do, including what you want to hide. You owe it to yourself to watch this. It was a challenge for me to make this choice of director.”

The choice of fixed lenses allows us to better observe the nature that surrounds the characters, which is essentially connected to their evolution: the Danube Delta makes them captive only by boat, a kind of social microcosm, locked in itself and the beauty that surrounds it. No internal tension is assumed.

Discovering the film that rocked the Cannes Film Festival

As raw in its treatment of modern violence as it is sublime in its ease of staging, Three kilometers to the end of the world He managed to touch the hearts of moviegoers during his last release at the Cannes Film Festival. Among the films in competition, Emmanuel Parvo’s feature film screened on the Croisette was awarded the Queer Palm, followed by Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Innocence.

Awarded since 2010 for masterpieces such as Laurence Anyways, 120 Bpm or Portrait of a Girl on Fire, this special prize annually honors a feature film with LGBT+ themes. This year, the chairman of the jury was film director Lucas Dont (Girl, Close).

Three Kilometers to the End of the World, an unflinching chronicle of ordinary homophobia awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, can be seen in cinemas on October 23.