Victor Missud

Film

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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

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Victor Missud’s practice arises from his engagement with people marginalised by their local communities and society at large. They become the protagonists of works straddling the boundaries of documentary, fiction and genre cinema. He uses the resulting friction between reality and artifice to explore collective dynamics, the conditions of coexistence and new ways of living. His latest films – *La forêt de l’espace*, *À qui le monde*, *Solenopsis Invicta*– have been screened and won awards in France and abroad – Centre Pompidou, IFFR Rotterdam, Visions du Réel, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, IDFA Amsterdam, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, États généraux du film documentaire de Lussas.

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