2024-08-11

Locarno Review: 400 Cassettes (2024)

Marina D. Richter
Festivals, Locarno, Shorts / 400 Cassettes, Argyris Pavlidis, Panayiota Yagli, Pardi di Domani, Thelyia Petraki /0 Comments

Locarno Film Festival
Pardi Di Domani International Competition

On a scale from 1-10, how many of the lectures held by your science teachers at school did you pay attention to? In my case, that would be zero. I have almost no recollection of anything they used to say because that bunch couldn’t communicate their knowledge. In Thelyia Petraki’s intricately woven short 400 Cassettes, the science teacher has found a connection to at least two particular students who happen to be BFFs. One of them – Fay (Panayiota Yagli), inspired by his story about the speed of light and moon rays, draws plenty of cosmic bodies with a blue pen on her arm during the class.

Cosmology plays a significant role in Petraki’s script inspired by human curiosity about our place in the universe, fear of being forgotten in that multitude of planets, stars and vast, unexplored corners of outer space, and our urge to find out if there is more to life than just existing at one place for a limited time. Spirituality also enters the stage through lengthy discussions about the connection between dreams, the universe and life. The dialogues built around those questions are written with wit and great literacy without sounding forced. Each word feels like something we speak about with our besties, wrapped in thoughts about the meaning of life.

The film’s story is set in the pre-digital era, somewhere in the late 1980s when the thirst for knowledge was quenched with the physical exploration of the world and friendships were built through the intense time spent together. Nostalgia is almost certainly the wrong word to describe the general feeling that 400 Cassettes evokes, although its dreamy photography and the synth-pop score that serve as a glue between different memories about a friendship come pretty close to it.

Elly (Ellie Galousi), a smiley red-haired girl with deep insights into life isn’t the one we expect to fade away from the screen. Not the way she does. But it is a position that the Greek helmer takes deliberately to remind us that things, or rather people, are not always what they seem to be. She also addresses the importance of the character-building period of each person’s life, which also happens to be the most difficult one – teendom, and the undeniable influence of people we bond with at that particular stage of our existence.

The film is named after one special tape selected from “400 original cassettes”, that Fay gives to Elly (Ellie Galousi) as a special birthday present. For the new generations, this could be a special Spotify mix or a YouTube video of some great emotional value.

400 Cassettes is an ode to profound friendships and unanswered love that mark our lives forever, It is clever, warm and heartbreaking at the same time, but it is also a love poem about the analogue era which made us think before we spoke. It also celebrates its cosmetic imperfections with the occasional over-exposure to light and the granularity of images.

With its world premiere at this edition of the Locarno Film Festival, in the Pardi di Domani International Competition, 400 Cassettes will most certainly take a big leap in the international film festival circuit.