The first feature-film collaboration between celebrated artist-filmmakers Ben Rivers and Ben Russell follows an unnamed character as he explores three very different existential options and seemingly disparate moments in his life: as a member of a commune on a small Estonian island; living alone in the breathtaking wilds of northern Finland; and during a concert as the singer and guitarist of a black metal band in norway. Marked by loneliness, ecstatic beauty and an optimism of the darkest sort, A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness is a radical proposition for the existence of utopia in the present. Starring musician Robert AA lowe (best known for his intense live performances under the name Lichens) in the lead role, this haunting film lies somewhere between fiction and non-fiction – it is at once a document of experience and an experience itself, an inquiry into transcendence that sees the cinema as a site for transformation.