Stefan, a Romanian construction worker living in Brussels, is about to move back home. He cooks up a big pot of soup to give as a goodbye gift to friends and family. As he is ready to go, he meets a Belgian-Chinese young woman who’s doing a doctorate on mosses. Her attention for the near-invisible stops him in his tracks.
“This film is about boxes of soup, about seeds and roots and the soft moss under our feet. And consequently, it is a film about what it means to be human.”
Bas Devos
“I’m not saying that my film is activism…but it is, in some sense, radical; it proposes alternative ways of being—being in the world, being with each other. I don’t think it offers a greater salvation, but the film does try to say that there is a lot of care in the world.”
Bas Devos
“Here is an attempt at protection against darkness. Film is generally a way to think about what isn’t otherwise possible, and it is necessary for me as a human being not to despair.”
Bas Devos
“Here is experiential rather than story-driven. The big things happen not in the words, but through gestures, physical and emotional. Gestures like showing someone something. Pointing at something you want them to see. Opening your hands to show someone what you are holding. Offerings, all. And so even though Here is a sparsely populated film, the feeling is that of a collective, a group created by the offerings—of conversation, listening, looking, giving—even in brief chance encounters.”
Sheila O’Malley
“Boris Debackere’s sound design is exquisite, and extremely important in establishing the meditation and sometimes dreamlike mood. There is a symphony of buzzing bees, whispering wind, rustling long grasses, bird chirps, woodpeckers, distant booms of construction. Sometimes most of the sound drops out, leaving only the woodpecker, or the bees. This has a disorienting almost dizzying effect. Stefan and Shuxiu walk through the woods, and sometimes their footsteps are heard crunching on the dirt, sometimes the footsteps are dropped from the mix, leaving only the buzzing of bees. It’s a startling sound design, dramatic but in a very unobtrusive way.”
Sheila O’Malley
Devos’ decision to shoot in the unconventional 4:3 aspect ratio, which presents each frame as a square with vertical black bars on either side, creates the effect of flipping through old Polaroids from a forgotten summer. His understanding of the way that a single static image can advance a film is remarkable, as some elegantly composed shots of simmering soups and forest floor plant life contain as much humanity as his sequences with actors. The film’s richly melancholic colors turn even the most mundane shots of factories into pieces of art with enough depth to merit further study.”
Christian Zilko
“Embodied in Here is a calcifying of Devos’ most compelling sensibilities, drawing characterizations through an anti-exposition, unveiling detail through mannerism, allowing his actors to respond very slightly to their environments, and gathering these reactions into montage.”
Zachary Goldkind
“Here is a celebration of human connection in a depersonalized world, finding solace in community, potential romance, and nature. It serves as a cinematic antidote to an era marked by dwindling attention spans and human detachment, offering a poignant reflection on the power of living in the moment.”
Martin Kudláč
“Shooting on 16mm and making extraordinary use of natural light, Devos captures their interactions with the world and each other with a sense of patience, grace, and limitless curiosity. In so doing, he has created a subtle, inventive, and deeply affecting celebration of the treasures that perpetually surround us, whether they are being shared with those next to us… or simply growing underfoot.”
Toronto International Film Festival
