Soul of a Beast

In a moment of summer madness, Gabriel, a teen-aged father, falls in love with enigmatic, Corey, his best friend Joel’s girlfriend. Deeply hurt by the discovery, Joel decides to take revenge. Gabriel is catapulted into the implacable wilderness of his own heart, where imagination is more real than reality.

“I developed the first scenario very early on. it was totally different from the final version. Some subjects were already there: birth, death, and freedom. But the film turned out to be a love story.  A simple, love story, a visual representation of the experience of falling in love. It’s the story of a young man who falls in love, of all the feelings you feel in your flesh. It talks about the fact that love exacerbates everything. It’s as if someone has cast a spell on you.” Lorenz Merz, cineuropa.org

“I suddenly became a father at 18 and, at the same time, my closest friend died. Paradoxically, the emotions I felt while going through these life-altering experiences were nearly identical; it was like when hot and cold water touch your skin simultaneously and, for a brief moment, it is impossible to discern which sensation belongs to which occurrence. Everything around me was more intense than any reality I had ever known before. Both strokes of fate opened up an almost transcendental but raw perception of the world. The feeling that I was  catching a glimpse of the heavens through a sudden tear has stayed with me.” Lorenz Merz