User Reviews

Having found Dearest Sister (2016-also reviewed) to be a superb film,I was thrilled to discover that the WOW Film Festival were presenting film maker Mattie Do's latest title,with a Q&A,leading to me going on a long walk.

View on the film:

Revealing in a lively 90 minute Q&A with regular producer Annick Mahnert after the screening/stream that she was inspired to do the film, after holding hands with her mum,as her mother was on her deathbed, directing auteur Mattie Do continues to build on the genre criss-crossing of Dearest Sister (2016-also reviewed)with haunting long panning shots down the long path where the man and a ghost walk between the present,and fifty years earlier,where as a child he was caring for hid dying mother.

In a production that was at risk of breaking apart at any moment, (producer Mahnert called the production companies "Very difficult" in the Q&A) Do displays an adventurous ambition, from working with a large (for Laos) crew of 20 people, the first time filming on a set, (the dusty home of the old man-the rest was filmed on location) and her using CGI for the first time, (in the Q&A, Do mentions she was a perfectionist,for the amount of smoke coming from a plane in the opening.)

Hitting all of these firsts, Do magnificently blends them into the haunted atmosphere of striking low-lighting cast across the screen,as the old man (with a ghost who follows him) crosses time and meets his younger self, and elegant push-in shots from Do arch forward to the ghostly spiritual world the old man has interacted with,since the death of his mum.

Continuing to cross the raw family drama with a poetic flourish of supernatural Horror that they had sighted in Dearest Sister,the screenplay by Christopher Larsen (aka: Mattie Do's husband) brilliantly explores the grief and agonizing loss that the old man has carried since childhood, (with the largely mute ghost always by his side,meaning he is never far away from the history of death.)

For the Sci-Fi time travel element, Larson wonderfully weaves it into the horror of loss and grief,as the old man attempts to change events in his childhood, which has a chilling affect on his present long walk.