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The Field

What is hidden comes to the surface.

synopsis

In the countryside of southern Sweden lives Gloria, a widow and mother of three. She loves birds, karaoke and betting on horses. Gloria works at a local chemical plant. Since her husband committed suicide she has developed a gambling addiction. She begins to seek comfort in sex with a much younger man from work. To earn extra money she secretly buries toxic waste in a field near the factory. When she discovers that a new landowner has started to cultivate the soil, she tries to remove the harvest, but the toxicity spreads. Birds and cows die, a man falls into a coma. When she finds out that her husband had cancer due to the toxic materials from the factory, her grief and guilt emerge and force her to make sacrifices. What is hidden comes to the surface.

Director’statement

I am intrigued by the self-destructive side of humans hidden in everyday life, in the slow, almost silent violence that we inflict upon Earth and ourselves. It is strange how we refine and blend materials from nature to fit our needs, even though the outcome might destroy us in the end. What is natural from the start might eventually become alien to us. We are gifted with self-defense mechanisms allowing us to suppress realities we can’t deal with. This is survival behavior. I wonder when it is necessary to forget and hide things in order to cope, and when it is crucial that we don’t. What happens if we acknowledge the darker side of ourselves, look at it and try to understand what kind of creatures we really are? It seems to me as if we often get stuck in a conflict of interests between nature, social expectations, the higher good and our own needs. Gloria follows her own drives to survive without caring about the consequences. She acts selfishly and destructively, out of fear of pain. Set against images of a dark and cold landscape that turns mysterious, Gloria hides things she shouldn’t hide, but does so since she is only human.

TFL PROGRAMME:
ScriptLab 2011
Discover more details here:
Download
PDF
TFL Catalogue 2011

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