F. J. Ossang's '9 doigts' Featured in Artpress Summer Cinema Series

The third episode of Artpress's summer cinema cabinet of curiosities highlights F. J. Ossang's 2018 film '9 doigts' (99 mins). The film follows Magloire (Paul Hamy), a reluctant hero who joins gang leader Kurtz aboard the Sri Ahmed Volkinson V in search of Nowhereland, an island made of industrial waste. Ossang, a poet, punk musician, and filmmaker, has made five features and numerous shorts since the 1980s, favoring black-and-white cinematography and poetic itinerancy over naturalism. The film's prologue echoes Orson Welles's 'Touch of Evil' (1952), with noir signifiers in a frontier urban space. Ossang shoots in locations like Portugal, the Azores, and Chile, creating an imaginary cartography. He remains committed to celluloid, stating in a 2018 interview with Débordements that film is 'a prodigious phenomenon, the sun burns it, engraves it, reveals it.' The film features Gaspard Ulliel as the Doctor, Pascal Greggory as Ferrante, Lionel Tua as Warner Oland, Lisa Hartmann as Drella, and Damien Bonnard as Kurtz. Jean-Jacques Manzanera wrote the article.