20,000 Days on Earth, a documentary about singer and culture icon Nick Cave by the artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, will have its Belgian premiere at the 41st Film Fest Gent. The surprising and heartfelt film is the second title of the renewed music section Sound and Vision: presented by Spotify.
Nick Cave has long been one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures in the music and film world. 20,000 Days on Earth enhances his mystique. This innovative drama/documentary features Cave as both subject and coconspirator, intimately documenting his artistic process and combining it with a fictional staged narrative of his 20,000th day on Earth. As a result, the film also explores the creative spirit.
The film weaves two parallel narrative threads. The first is a cinematic portrait of Cave's 20,000th day, created through a series of staged, but not scripted, scenes and encounters. The second looks in depth at his creativity—from writing through recording and rehearsal to performance.
This unique blend of documentary essay and cinematic fiction demonstrates the connection between Cave and the filmmakers, visual artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard; all three are illuminating the search for truth through artifice and myth. Ultimately, 20,000 Days on Earth reaches beyond Cave to ask all of us how many days we've been alive and what use we've made of that time.
The film was awarded at Sundance and Sydney Film Festival and will be released in Belgium on 29 October. Shell Shock, the opera that Nick Cave wrote with Belgian composer Nicholas Lens, will have its world premiere on 24 October at De Munt in Brussels until 2 November.
Listen to the Sound and Vision playlist with music from the film on the Spotify account of Film Fest Gent.
