EXCLUSIVE: Think of the lowly moth, considered a sort of ugly stepsister of the beautiful butterfly, aimlessly winging around outdoor lights at nighttime whenever the opportunity presents itself. In short, little more than a pest or afterthought of the insect world.
But the truth is moths are wonders to behold, if examined with the attention they merit – as in the new documentary Nocturnes, directed by Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan. The film – winner of a Special Jury Award for Craft at the Sundance Film Festival — opens at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on October 25, which will qualify it for Oscar consideration. We have your first look at Nocturnes in the trailer above.
“An immersive viewing experience of sound and imagery, the film weaves together an intricate and poetic tapestry of our world,” notes a synopsis. “Ecologist Mansi sets out on a quest to study moths in one of the most vibrant places on earth. She teams up with Bicki, a young man from the indigenous Bugun community, to seek clues about what the future has in store for the moths.
“Together, Mansi and Bicki traverse the landscape, meticulously working night after night to put up light screens that transform into a dynamic canvas with moths of varying sizes, designs and textures, creating a painterly effect with their form, movement and color…”
The synopsis continues, “By focusing on a small, ephemeral, nocturnal creature like the moth, Nocturnes seeks to question an human-centric view of the world. The lush forest, throbbing with a vast diversity of life, emerges as a breath-taking character as the film responds to the symphony of sounds and the inherent rhythms of the trees, the wind and the rain.”
Grasshopper Film/Metamorphosis Film Junction/Sandbox Films
In addition to Sundance, where Nocturnes premiered, the film has played at festivals around the world including the prestigious Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival in Greece, where it won best film in Thessaloniki’s Habitat Section.
The film grew out of a chance encounter between the filmmakers and the aforementioned Mansi. Eventually, the directors took cameras into the field in the Eastern Himalayas to document the ecologist’s work and winged subjects.
“As the daylight faded, Mansi and her chief collaborator, Bicki, put up an ordinary-looking screen on a metal frame and switched on blue lights. What followed was stunning,” Dutta and Srinivasan write in a directors’ statement. “It was like a film unfolding before us as thousands of moths slowly filled the white screen. Flaps, flutters, buzzes and thuds filled the air. The sonic and visual impression that this encounter had on us became the foundation for our exploration of the often-ignored world of insects, these seemingly ‘insignificant’ creatures. How are they connected to us? Why should we care about them? The film urges us towards an understanding of the human world as being part of, dependent on, and impacted by even the most minute beings in nature. In this quest, our guides are a woman from South Asia, and a man from an indigenous community who has not completed basic school education.”
Grasshopper Film is distributing Noctures. Dogwoof is handling international sales. The documentary is a production of Metamorphosis Film Junction and Sandbox Films.
Watch the Nocturnes trailer above.