Samsara was a vital journey, it has always been, it has always conceived like a vital journey to make us, the people involved in the shooting, grow. To grow from the relationship with the other, from the will to know and understand the other, from that genuine curiosity and will to learn from a different culture. And from the perspective that this dialogue and mutual learning is a vital force of growth.

We learned a lot, a lot, from our friends in Laos, and we learned a lot, a lot, from our friends in Zanzibar. And I think that they could say the same about this friendship with us. We’ve been together discovering each other while working on the film, and before, developing cinema workshops with local cinema students. We learned a lot also of ourselves, our way of living, and the amazingly big possibilities of how life can be lived. 

Many times, when you are focused on your own culture, you forget about how people live, and how life can be lived in other places. I think it is really important that this dialogue exists, we shouldn’t stay placidly in our own place. And neither can western culture have the monopoly of cinema screens. The culture of not-so-powerful countries should be reflected in the cinema, otherwise, the rich cultural diversity that we have, will keep being eroded by this western culture image bombing that gets everywhere from the screens. 

This film was, before finishing it and before knowing if it was going to be or not a good film, a success for me. It opened a window on myself that let me understand life and the world in a much wider view. Cinema is connected with life, they dance hand in hand. Lois PATIÑO

Coast of Death (2013), Red Moon Tide (2020), The Sower of Stars (2022)

The Universe of Layers Shined in the Film 
Samsara is a film about the cycle of rebirth. It’s a story about the past and future lives of someone reborn as a gigantic elephant, a starfish, and a baby goat. The film deals with the world of latently layered past lives existing within a single entity. At the same time, Samsara evokes the rebirth of images as well. While other films may use overlaid images simply for aesthetic expression, they take a special form of foreshadowing the possible lives one could reincarnate into in Samsara.

The first half of the film follows a teenage monk living in Laos while the second half centers on women who farm seaweed in Zanzibar. It isn’t difficult to feel the sense of samsara between the two stories that each end and begin with death and birth. Samsara becomes especially intriguing when the film pulls from and creates the experience of a soul floating between bodies after death and before birth. The film follows an old lady and her soul after her death into the world of bardo, the state of in-between before rebirth. How does a film bring this experience of a bodiless soul to life? Lois Patiño chose to do so by leaving only the physical medium of 16mm film. Aspects of cinema that drive the story forward such as narratives, images, and the connection between shots evaporate, leaving behind texture, colors, and blinking of flickering flashes. The film goes further and asks the audience to close their eyes, leaving behind only hearing—the last of the five senses that persist until the end of life. This moment, portraying the ambiguous area between death and rebirth, becomes a space for meditation through the collaboration of the film itself and the audience who act accordingly by voluntarily changing their perceptive field to get closer to the experience of death.

The change of perception in Samsara does not only serve the meditative experience. To fully feel rebirth within one’s body, the film proposes a rejection of anthropocentrism when thinking of nature and animals. To gaze upon an entity as a collection of all possibilities. To share a beginning with another being. The details of the world start to fill in. Now, I believe films can help expand the soul. KIM Yesolbi

Production Señor & Señora
Distribution Curzon
International Sales Bendita Films Sales (info@benditafilms.com)

2023 Berlinale Special Jury Prize Encounters Award (Winner)