Aquarela

“Victor Kossakovsky’s bombastic documentary captures the raw power of water … an experience of shock and awe, as well as wonder.” – Screen Daily

In Aquarela, boundary-pushing documentary maker Victor Kossakovsky (¡Vivan Los Antipodas!, MIFF 2012) turns his unparalleled cinematic eye to the most fundamental of all subjects: water. A jaw-droppingly vivid collage of footage shot in Russia, Miami, Venezuela, Greenland and more, Aquarela is a globe-trotting and at times death-defying exercise in documentary filmmaking – a wordless, almost human-free meditation on water's capacity for both limitless creation and wholesale destruction.

To accompany the awe-inspiring and sometimes terrifying visions of water’s capacity for both limitless creation and wholesale destruction, is the film’s dramatic soundscape that consists of the roar of waves, ear-shattering cracking ice and the thrashing heavy metal score by Eicca Toppinen, the founder of Finnish symphonic metal band Apocalyptica. The result is a truly visceral cinematic experience that serves as a tribute to the power of water and a warning about the dangers of taking it for granted.

“A feast of HD imagery so crisp as to be almost disorienting … Aquarela matches sincere, open-eyed curiosity about the wider world to awe-inspiring technical virtuosity in realizing it.” – Variety