Projects
Home Away From Home
Two people switch islands and discover the beauty of positive disasters.
Pálína travels from Iceland to the Canary Islands to meet Pedro, a man she met on the Internet. Their meeting turns out to be a disaster, he sets her coat on fire, his demented grandmother, whom he lives with, strips her naked and a dead cat falls on her lap while on the way to a romantic dinner. Finally, Pedro locks Pálína up on a rooftop, intending to pick her up the next morning when he has gotten a grip of the situation. But the morning after she has disappeared. Pálína has been rescued by a fisherman and followed him to his reclusive house. To her own surprise, Pálína starts settling into this simple life. The fisherman is away most of the time and when there, he doesn’t talk. One day Pálína finds an intruder in the house. It is a little boy. She decides to stay and look after him. In the meantime, Pedro’s grandmother dies. Free now, he decides to go to Iceland and look for Pálína. He gets lost in the lava-landscape, cold and desperate and followed by an aggressive sheep. Luckily he comes across a woman that invites him to stay with her and her son. The two try to make him feel welcome but Pedro is not used to being taken care of by others and sneaks out in the middle of the night. While climbing a rock he gets stuck. A dangerous situation is avoided when the little boy helps him down. We leave Pedro and Pálína standing on different black beaches holding hands with the little boys.
The film is set on two volcanic islands that float between two continents on the opposite sides of Europe, north and south. The islands look the same. One is very cold, the other warm. The main characters reflect this. They are the opposite sides of the same character and their destinies mirror each other. They feel alien in their own skin. Try to get away, but end up in a place that seems exactly the same as the one they were running away from. Only now they are forced to deal with solitude and with nature; not in control of anything, they have to accept whatever fate brings to them. They are forced to be in the company of people they would not have chosen to be with, do things they would have deemed of no importance and finally become parents of children they barely know. Living on an island is contradictory. Islanders try never to be alone, but are lonely most of the time. The landscape, like the people, seems harsh from a distance but embraces the ones that dare come close. The small population means having a lot of space, but being surrounded by the sea is very claustrophobic. The community gives limited stimulation, basically because you always meet the same people, people you know things about that you have no business knowing. The brave ones choose to live on the edge of society in close contact with nature. Being alone in volcanic nature is challenging and stimulating. You experience yourself as an active part of creation. You listen to your breath, the wind rushing around you, a lonely bird calls out, then an airplane flies over, dozens of people breaking into your solitude. You watch them disappear and are alone again, listening to the wind and the sea humming in the distance. You are in total harmony with nature. Suddenly you feel like someone is watching you. You look around and see a funky sheep staring intensely at you. You feel afraid and very stupid. You rush to your car and drive to the safety of the city. The characters of the film can’t get away, they have to look that sheep in the eye and face their own fears.
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