Earwig

Ice teeth and piercing gazes: ›Earwig‹ is a surreal horror tale set within the misty gloom of the last century.

In her first English-language film, Lucile Hadžihalilović adapts a novel by fantasy author and artist Brian Catling, crafting a hallucinatory and hypnotic fever dream. Ten-year-old Mia never leaves her apartment, never says a word, living in almost complete seclusion. Her only caregiver is Albert, who looks after Mia's prosthetic teeth, which are made of ice and have to be replaced daily once they melt. When he has to give up Mia, Albert falls further and further into despair...
What is real and what is metaphor? In ›Earwig‹, the answer to both questions blurs into a ghostly phantasmagoria that seems to exclusively follow the laws of its literary template. Hadžihalilović's radically decelerated gothic horror spectacle lulls the audience into an enigmatic, unreal nightmare that clings to the body like ice-cold water and from which there is no escape.

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