Ventura Durall
Development support
On 21 December 2012, the world will end - but one place on the face of the Earth will survive the catastrophe: a tiny hamlet in France. This character-driven, existential comedy follows the locals and the esoteric outsiders and doomsdayers in the year leading up to D-day in Bugarach.
Long Synopsis
The subject of the apocalypse has always had its place in storytelling, from the novels of Jules Verne through to the science fiction of the 1950s, to Orson Welles’s radio “prank” and Lars von Trier’s Melancholia… but this year, 2012, the end of the world is really here. At least that’s what some people think.
And it’s going to turn life on its head in the little village of Bugarach in Southern France. Believed to be the only spot on the face of the Earth that will survive the apocalypse, the residents have been watching as their cobblestone streets, their corner cafés and their forests are invaded by new age esoterics and outright doomsdayers looking to survive December 21st, 2012.
Shot over an entire year from December to December, this character-driven story follows the locals and outsiders in the countdown to D-Day. Not only does a burgeoning micro-society begin to form with each newcomer awaiting their own version of the apocalypse, but the paranoia and abstract fears wear on the villager’s tight-knit community and sense of rationalism. Whether the mayor likes it or not, Bugarach slowly becomes the “Lourdes for crazy people”.
La fin du monde dives deeper into the subject of the apocalypse to reflect on the fears and coping strategies of humankind in times of deep material and spiritual crisis in the Western world. But between the farmers, store owners and lumberjacks, and the healers, new agers and end-of-the-worlders, the documentary is really an existential comedy.