Waiting for the Barbarians

This spring, Eugène Green carried out a workshop with twelve performers within what was called “Chantiers Nomades”. The result of this formative experience was his new movie. It was filmed with the bare minimum and non-professional actors. En attendant les barbares is a show of the style from the Le pont des arts’s director, highly depurated in its essence. Like in his other films, the protagonists face a process to search for light through the darkness, to connect with life after death, and has Baroque Art as its vehicle through Nicolas Tournier’s paintings as well as the only Arturian cycle written in Occitan, Jaufré. It’s not a coincidence that we are situated in the historic capital of Languedoc, Toulouse. Once it ends, it’s clear that the workshop’s objective was to prepare the alumni, through his anti-psychologistic interpretation method, for their reunion with the barbarism that Green identifies with the hegemonic American culture. (Gijón International Film Festival)