Welcome to The End of Times (El fin de los tiempos)! The Colombian film from Bibiana Rojas Gómez and Juan David Cárdenas Maldonado, mixing found footage and AI to explore trauma and depression and “politicize mental illness,” will world premiere in the competition lineup of the Venice Critics’ Week, an independent sidebar of the Venice Film Festival, on Sept. 10.
The co-directors also handled cinematography, with Cárdenas Maldonado writing the screenplay, and Rojas Gómez editing the movie. Split Screen is handling sales on The End of Times.
The ominous title likely makes you wonder what to expect. “Salomé searches through five decades of family footage for the reasons for her mother’s sadness,” reads a synopsis. “Trying to imagine different versions of her mother, Salomé finds out that all of them lead to depression and uneasiness in a context where it seems easier to conceive the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
By using AI, she experiences first-hand how difficult it is to conceive of another version of the world, one in which her mother could find some kind of meaning.
“Our age has glorified technological utopia, and the latest version of this promise is artificial intelligence,” the creative duo behind The End of Times says in a directors’ statement. “Yet, like earlier technological novelties, the shine of progress is discreetly stained by ambition, exploitation and misery. Seen from the perspective of peripheral countries condemned to the dark side of development and turned into an impoverished labor force, AI exposes its shadiest aspects.”
‘The End of Times,’ courtesy of Bruma Cine
They have more to say: “Our film seeks to show how the achievements of civilization are also triumphs of barbarism – a barbarism that is currently the rule under contemporary capitalism, or neoliberalism, a system of generalized physical and emotional exhaustion. In these conditions, depression has become the most common disease, not merely as a psychiatric phenomenon but as a social response to current material, economic and political realities.”
Conclude Rojas Gómez and Cárdenas Maldonado: “This project is an initiative to politicize mental illness. When it seems impossible to conceive a better world, sadness becomes the most usual form of adaptation.”
If your interest is piqued, THR can premiere an exclusive trailer. And since the spooky and mysterious images and words say much more than we could ever tease, let’s go right to this trailer for The End of Times.
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