At the end of the 19th century, on an isolated farm, Zélie is trapped under the authority of her father, Jacob, a deeply religious man. As a mysterious disease known as the “Black Veil” ravages the surrounding countryside and faith begins to blur with madness, she must fight to preserve her humanity and claim her freedom.
Grimmfest says: French maestro Quarxx, director of Grimmfest favourite PANDEMONIUM, makes a welcome return with this complex and challenging morality tale. Set in a plague-ridden alternate reality 19th Century rural French backwater, where Tesla Towers are springing up everywhere, generating the same paranoia as 5G does among modern day tinfoil hatters, it’s essentially a kind of French Gothic Western – with zombies – exploring issues of guilt, oppression, control, and faith under pressure. Imagine an Ingmar Bergman version of THE WALKING DEAD, with the ferociously uncompromising vision of Cormac McCarthy and the savvy, slippery, often subversive approach to genre of Christopher Priest, and you might have some idea of what to expect from this extraordinary film. But the best approach is simply to expect the unexpected. Dark, brutal, disturbing, consistently startling and surprising, it’s like nothing else you will see this year, and confirms the director as one of cinema’s true originals.