Métamorphoses

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Jupiter has to transform himself into a white bull to win the favor of the Phoenician princess Europa. In Christoph Honoré's loose adaptation of the Roman poet's myths, Europa is a curious student who wants to break free from the constraints of her life. When she meets the truckdriver Jupiter, she wastes no time and follows him. The teenager with North-African roots goes on an odyssey through the contemporary South of France, where gods of antiquity walk unrecognized among men. A virtually magical light suffuses the images of Honoré's Métamorphoses. The bright blue of the sky, the deep green of the woods, the glimmering dark of the rivers and lakes – everything seems to refer to a mystical realm that modern humans have exiled themselves from. But that is not the case. The other, forgotten side of our world is as present and real as the apartment blocks of the suburbs and the highways crossing the land like arteries made out of asphalt. With his ode to Ovid, Honoré created a miracle of transformation. Reality and myth become one and allow not just its ever-searching heroine a new and more unrestricted view of Europe in the early 21st century. (Internationales Filmfest Oldenburg)