Leviathan

Filmed off the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts — the U.S.'s largest fishing port and Melville's inspiration for Moby Dick — Leviathan plunges aboard a groundfish trawler on a weeks-long voyage. Dialogue-free yet mesmerising, it offers a visceral portrait of labour, machinery, sea life and the relentless force of the ocean.

Ernst Karel (Sound Editor and Mixer): 'In a film which is about a specific engagement with a situation, it's important to me that the soundtrack, as well as the image track, be of that encounter. Just as Lucien and Véréna were amazed by the images that emerged from those early GoPro cameras, likewise were we astounded by what struck me as the electroacoustic music that emerged from their plastic-encased mono microphones and low-bit-rate encoders. The sounds were haunted, abrasive, and evocative in a way that more "high-fidelity" recordings may not have been, and so naturally formed the basis for the soundtrack. In composing [it], I integrated these with more conventional stereo recordings that Véréna and Lucien made on the boat — chains clanging, the repetitive sounds of labour — and re-recording mixer Jacob Ribicoff then added some foley (e.g. knives cutting through fish were inaudible over the ship's overwhelming engine noise).'