Mnemonic Muse

A mysterious young woman arrives in the very heart of ‘Fortress Europe’ in the Parisian metropolis. This is the beginning of her journey, from station to station, port to port, city to city, criss-crossing Europe gathering stories along the way. Her travels through Europe’s metropoles and hinterlands bring her into direct contact with many different migrants. Through coming into contact with this beguiling stranger and sharing their story, each migrant is made to reflect upon their own relationship to nostalgia.

Mnemonic Muse is an exploration of nostalgia, as a condition, across Europe. At it’s core is the mythic abduction of Europa by Zeus, a story that is predicated upon desire, and which comes to define the continent that carries her name as a desirous place. Nostalgia is also born out of this Ancient Greek mythos and can be viewed as a desire to return home. All the stories the young woman unearths suggest that nostalgia is a mythological condition that strongly impacts those who are living both in time and space, however dislocating this may prove to be.

The film will be a hybrid of fiction and documentary elements, that transports the past into the present, where memory and imagination reframe the nostalgic.

The film is directed by Tasos Giapoutzis (Quiet Life).

Estimated Completion: January 2024