Victor Missud

Film

In a cactus nursery in Palermo, a strange human community lives in a weird symbiosis with insects and plants, sheltered from the violence of the world. This fragile ecosystem is threatened by the arrival of disinfection agents looking for an ant that is considered a pest.

The Ibervillea nursery is a place of care where people with psychiatric disorders, juveniles in custody, young people on community service and, on rare occasions, customers rub shoulders on a daily basis. Every day, this small, diverse but functional community is busy looking after cacti, plants that rarely disappoint because they are so hardy and already quite self-sufficient, in a slow timeframe that is closer to the rhythm of nature than that of humans, and conducive to the imagination.

An island within an island, surrounded by high walls, it is also a troubled place that brings together men and women whom we prefer to keep under control. Within this framework, the ant, itself unwanted, blithely crosses barriers and demarcations. This interference in the organisation of the world, between the inside and the outside of the garden, creates a draft, a contact, and questions the protectionist efforts tending towards categorisation and the rejection of otherness.

Solenopsis Invicta aims to paint an imaginary portrait of this garden and its occupants, and, through fiction and humour, to question margins, madness and violence.

Victor Missud

Victor Missud’s work takes a poetic interest in people who are territorially and societally marginalised. They become non-professional actors in his works. His cinematographic work, a blend of documentary, fiction and genre cinema, revolves around the shooting period: permeable to place, personalities and events, this is a time for research and experimentation, so that the film becomes a witness to its progress and discoveries, its encounters, its humour and its outbursts. His work has been shown and awarded prizes in France and abroad: Visions du réel, IFF Rotterdam, Hors Pistes – Centre Pompidou, Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin, États généraux du documentaire de Lussas.

Production

Credits