Toxic, the big winner at the last Locarno International Film Festival (Golden Leopard and Best First Film), deals with the protagonists' conflictive relationship with their bodies: fundamental elements of self-discovery and, at the same time, battlefields from which they cannot escape. Maria and Kristina are two teenagers who seek an escape from the industrial city in which they live and enrol in a disreputable modelling school, where they will be forced to comply with extreme bodily demands. Against this background, Lithuanian Saulè Biluvaité explores the depths of adolescent anguish in a society founded upon the cult of the body and unattainable canons of beauty. Drawing on autobiographical elements, she formulates a powerful social critique at the intersection between the quest for perfection and the portrayal of life on the peripheries.
Screenings
O.V. in Lithuanian with English and Spanish subtitles