In a society ruled by an extremist cult, a lonely man unravelling finds a homeless outcast and attempts to rid her of her forbidden ways.
FIGA’s drop comes at an incredible coincidental time inline with the recent events at the US Capitol. While the story doesn’t bold around high conspiracies, its essence and setting stems from them. When Nicole Albarelli set out to make this film, her intention was to try and metaphorically expose the hypocrisy of so many religious and governmental institutions. “Little did I know that by the time I finished the film, so much of this fictional world would become part of our new reality.”
FIGA is a film about the human spirit living amongst dominance, control and fear.
The idea for this film has been in my head for years. It’s basically a culmination of my fascination with cults and the hypocrisy so often linked with religious and governmental institutions. It’s a film about the human spirit living amongst dominance, control and fear. Concepts that have become even more relevant to us all in recent times. As a filmmaker, my challenge with this film was to rely less on dialogue but rather movement. Ive always embraced improvisational dialogue in my films.
My job is to create the characters, the narrative and the atmosphere and then whatever happened in these worlds was magic. A lot of times that magic came in the form of unwritten dialogue. However, with FIGA, that was never an option. I wanted to try and move the story along with the same depth and emotion, but with very little dialogue. Movement then became my chosen medium.
FIGA defies the conventional short film storytelling form. Breaking up in segments, with structured parts resembling music videos, almost in the same way we saw in ‘Found Me’, featured just a couple of weeks ago. Can this be a new trend shaping up for 2021? As mentioned by Nicole, the highly cinematic film gets an additional lair of communication through the character’s movements. Something that leaves the audience with a rather unique experience to take in.
