Walking on Water | Andrey Paounov
The Floating Piers project was conceived by artist Christo almost 50 years ago, in 1970, together with his wife Jeanne-Claude. Together, they tried to turn it into reality several times in places like Argentina and Japan but were unable to obtain the necessary permits. Yet Christo never stopped dreaming and created sketches and drawings that show the amazing effect of the floating piers with which the film opens.
After a series of particularly impressive works of art that he created together with his wife Jeanne-Claude, Christo dreams of walking on water. To this end, he wants to build paths leading from the shores of Italy’s Lake Iseo to the small island in its center.
The man who wrapped the Reichstag in fabric, spread a curtain over a valley in the Rocky Mountains, and covered a vast area in Japan with umbrellas, did not think it was a big deal to spread more than 200,000 polyethylene cubes wrapped in fabric across a lake. But then Italian bureaucracy came into play.
Building the “floating piers” proved to be a complex task both technically and personally, and although the spectacular creation attracted tens of thousands of visitors, there was never a moment behind the scenes when the drama level was less than a wave.
Previous festivals: Locarno, TIFF, Doc NYC 2018, Hong Kong IFF, Thessaloniki DFF 2019, Louvre FF
Directed by: Andrey Paounov.
USA-Italy 2018, 100 minutes, English and Italian, Hebrew subtitles
