For months Eva Van Tongeren maintains a correspondence with the convicted and incarcerated paedophile Thomas. With a voice-over she reflects upon his thoughts and how their atrociousness resonates through her daily life. Despite her unchanging incomprehension she seeks the limits of her empathy and tries to find ways to deal with such a loaded subject. As it proves to be impossible to make a connection she looks for something that does bind them. This brings her to the American landscape surrounding Death Valley, a place Thomas always wanted to visit. The filmmaker sends him fragments of quiet landscapes and memories that will never be his.

“Anarchist, utopian, Situationist, Surrealist, mystical thoughts … Twentieth-century poets, for whom words are both breath and meaning. Sound and sigh, text and texture, page and image. Crossing a century of horror and promise, of barbarity and technology, whose burden discharges heavily onto any future. And very low, in the clamor of time, the poet deals the blows of words that we stubbornly refuse to hear: we’ll need to work ‘till the end of time, we’ll need to rediscover both the gesture and the word.” (GM)

French with English subtitles