The Anchorage

C.W. Winter & Anders Edström
,
US, SE
,
2009
,
35mm
,
87'

C.W. Winter & Anders Edström’s first film, shot in Sweden's Stockholm Archipelago, describes the life of a woman, Ulla Edström, over the course of three fictional days. On its face, it's a film about the landscape that she inhabits, her passage of time on this rugged forest island, and the appearance of an unfamiliar hunter who disturbs her quiet corner of the world.

 

Films in the style of The Anchorage can easily evaporate into thin air, their focus on the rhythms of quotidian life an excuse for a lack of daring and substance. The Anchorage doesn’t simply avoid this trap: Its mysteries are uncommonly profound and deeply felt; its depiction of a woman entrenched in solitude is not just contemplative but unbearably tense. And Winter and Edström don’t simply evoke transience and fragility, dread and fortitude; they capture these invisible states through delicate yet haunting images that render them startlingly visible.” (Michael Joshua Rowin / Artforum)