Clara is a ballerina. She’s also anorexic. Painful and complex, yet strangely euphoric, her relationship to her body and to food go well beyond the clichés we associate with the disease. Denying herself food brings her feelings of ecstasy (as suggested by the film’s title) and she sees her physical body, the vessel of her own creation, through the lens of architecture. This vertiginous documentary, intertwining fiction and profoundly intimate memoir, is Brazilian director Moara Passoni’s first feature-length film. It is a visceral cinematographic experience. Passoni took inspiration from her own life to meld the bursts of sound and images in a style that borders on experimental, all within sepulchrally beautiful frames. Ecstasy offers a new vision on a devastating subject that proves the importance of knowing how to work with voiceover, which here plays the role of sublime conveyor of the psychological state and sensitivity of a young woman, which will surely resonate with others.

Zoé Protat
Programming Director, Festival du nouveau cinéma