HAGAZUSSA // Movie Projection and cineforum with Mariel Baqueiro -Director of Photography-

HAGAZUSSA // Movie Projection and cineforum with Mariel Baqueiro -Director of Photography-

Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse (German: Hagazussa, an Old High German term for “Witch”) is a 2017 horror film written and directed by Lukas Feigelfeld.

The film takes place in a remote mountain village in the 15th-century Alps, and follows Aleksandra Cwen as Albrun, a goat-herder shunned by her fellow townspeople who finds herself in an uneasy friendship with a local villager.

The film is divided into four acts: “Shadows”, “Horn”, “Blood” and “Fire” spelled in the rune alphabet of the Elder Futhark and in the modern Latin alphabet.

At the beginning of the film a traveler warns our protagonists to go back, because it was starting to get dark and he was afraid of meeting the “Perchta“, a sort of Alpine deity, who if you want to associate with a more familiar figure, could be something like the Befana, an italian folkloristic figure

According to the director Lukas Feigelfeld:

“After researching about old pagan beliefs and folklore about witches, that were supposed to roam the mountain woods in those times, my interest was to develop a character that these folk tales would have branded as a witch, but to dig deeper into her psyche and see her as the traumatized, mistreated and finally delusional person that society constructed. As well as to understand what utterly evil things people were led to do while suffering from psychosis in the Middle Ages and being surrounded by superstition and religious prosecution. The film tries to depict a very personal and empathetic mental image of a nightmarish and sick mind.”

We are honoured to have with us the director of photography Mariel Baqueiro who will be present during the screening and available afterwards for a small discussion about the movie.

https://www.marielbaqueiro.com/