Completed - JAPANESE, PORTUGUESE - Drama - 100 minutes
Year of production : 2011 Director(s) : Edgar HONETSCHLÄGER Writer(s) : Edgar HONETSCHLÄGER, Reinhard JUD Cast : Rosanne MULHOLLAND, Hiyori YUKI, Saito YOSUKE, William FERREIRA, Tenji KAMOGAWA, Komoto KYOICHI, Yukika KUDO, Kazuto TAGUCHI Producer(s) : Edgar HONETSCHLÄGER (Edoko Institute Vienna), Yukika KUDO (Ribo Ltd. Tokyo), Gabriele KRANZELBINDER (KGP Kranzelbinder Gabriele Production)
The Japanese scientist Sekai [=the world], seeking a bright future for mankind, invents a motor that burns water. His wife Hikari [=the light], dies when giving birth to their son Aun [the beginning and the end of all things]. As a toddler Aun discovers an unusual sea snail at the beach. Sekai uses it for experiments involving his own body, which ultimately kills him. Twenty years later Euclides [=number theorist], a deaf scientist from Brazil’s capitol – the modernist Brasília – carries on Sekai’s experiments. He believes the sea snail to be the missing link to a livable future and therefore asks his wife Nympha [=pupal stage of butterfly] to find Aun. She takes on an ancient Japanese card game with the Japanese yakuza as she discovers that Aun used to gamble in Tokyo. Fairies from the woods send her an elf messenger who leads her to Aun – now serving as a priest in a Shinto shrine. Infatuation takes a hold of them. Nympha enters the world Sekai had envisioned. Euclides, by now in trouble with the sponsors of his project gets his wife to lead him to Aun’s shrine. As they arrive Aun – aged dramatically – hands the sea snail to Euclides. Delighted the latter carries out experiments while his wife tries to find a way back to the world she’d been able to experience. Euclides rejoices as he believes to having succeeded in creating ‘the future’. The fairies put a spell on him. Euclides dies. With his last breath he exhales a substance that makes the world vanish from the universe.
Country(ies) : AUSTRIA, JAPAN Financing plan : Austrian Film Institute, Vienna Film Fund, ORF (Austrian TV), the province of Upper Austria, the City of Tokyo, Tochigi Province, Shizuoka province, Yamanashi province