“An old man like me, guided by these slightly childish impulses to have an adventure as if I was apathetic, fat Indiana Jones”
When his long-time girlfriend Mariana is accepted into a year-long study programme in France, filmmaker Ignacio Ceroi packs his bags and leaves Buenos Aires to follow his beloved for a period of three months — all his visitor visa allows. Arriving in Toulouse, the young man purchases a camera on eBay, just to find that its memory had not been erased. Through the files, Nacho — as he likes to be called — is introduced to a nameless Frenchman, whom he calls Jean Pierre. He goes through hours and hours of footage, watching the man play with his dogs, walk alongside a stream and go about mundane tasks.
Fuelled by curiosity and believing something could be made with the archive, Nacho contacts the seller through the online platform and finds out Jean Pierre is actually named Charles. The man, who is skeptical that something can be squeezed out of his disjointed visual diary, allows the Argentinian to do as he pleases with the footage. From there on, the two men exchange emails, Charles clarifying Nacho’s questions as the filmmaker rummages through the hours of video.
The deep wounds of colonisation
We go from the banality of Charles’ life in the French countryside — his easy afternoons by the barbeque and the loving routine he built with his pets and wife, Margaux — to a completely different environment as the man moves to Cameroon after losing his job due to the financial crisis. Working as a chauffeur for a diplomat, Charles spends his free time exploring the foreign country, his camera always in hand. Through the footage, we observe the unpaved streets through the eyes of a man who has never come close to the reality he now finds himself inserted in. Despite the physical closeness, a distance always remains – he is there, but never fully present.
“Who is this Charles, really? How come he films with such freedom in a country that hates the colonising French? How come he is so boldly getting into those places being the only white man around? Isn’t that an evolved form of colonialism?” ponders Ceroi, evoking long-ingrained pains natural to the ones who were born in colonised soil. Both men experience the complex journey of immigration, however, Charles benefits from a form of privilege that was never granted to Latin Americans. Often, when a European man leaves the padded comfort of his country to emigrate somewhere perceived as less developed, he’s painted a saviour – someone who sacrificed his luxury, who traded down. When the opposite happens, on the other hand, expatriate becomes immigrant, just one of many who left in search of something better.
A painful sense of detachment
As Ceroi unravels the stranger in the footage, he is engulfed by an unexpected wave of self-awareness. The images become more and more incoherent as Charles is faced with the everlasting consequences of his voyage – the aftermath of what once was nothing but promise a reality too soul-crushing to be rapidly digested. “We have this notion of important things happening elsewhere, always elsewhere”, the man says, communicating a deep detachment. Longing for home and yet paralysed by the fear of home no longer being, Charles is trapped in limbo, desperately grasping to any opportunity of connection, loneliness a punishing companion.
What Will Summer Bring is a poetic reflection on displacement, a creation blessed by fortune. Ignacio Ceroi builds a poignant dwelling on the contemporary nomad that beautifully conveys a man’s existential quest. Here, the old saying is proven true: one man’s trash is indeed another man’s treasure.
What is your favourite film built with found footage? Tell us in the comments!
What Will Summer Bring screened as part of the Forum section at Berlinale 2021.
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