Synopsis
A ten-metre-high diving board. People climb up: to leap or to climb down? The situation highlights a dilemma: endure the instinctive fear of taking the plunge or the humiliation of having to climb down. Ten Meter Tower is an entertaining study of human vulnerability.
A word from Tënk
The scenography is as spare as possible: a ten-meter diving board, four microphones, and two cameras. Bathing suit-clad bodies fall, (or not…) into the pool far below. Using this almost schematic set-up, the film diffracts the gaze through the use of split-screen and slow motion. Isolated from any social context and confronted with an ancestral fear, the bodies appear in the utmost destitution. The masks come off, and we revel in the hilarity of each of these formidable sketches. A treasure trove of documentary staging, Ten Meter Tower is unabashedly convincing. In 2017, it won the Audience Prize and the Special Jury Prize at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.
Pascal Catheland
Filmmaker
