Wesens (2020)

WESENS is a first of its kind art-house, found footage, sci-fi, mystery set in South Africa in 1967. On the surface, the film follows four South African Republican Intelligence Agents as they investigate an unidentified object that landed on a farm in the desolate Karoo landscape. They record this investigation with their Super 8 and 16mm cameras. What follows is a mystery that will keep you guessing until the very last line. Khoisan mythology drives the narrative of the film and unlike traditional found footage films there are no jump scares and gore. The film rather uses the found footage technique as method to reveal the spiritual quest of the protagonist through the "real-life" lens of South Africa in the 1960s. Wesens is thus an allegory that subverts the clichéd notions of genre films, blurring the lines between art-house and traditional commercial cinema. The film uses multi-layered metaphors, extensively researched dialogue and long meditative shots as part of its cinematic search for the "absolute truth" about our existence here on earth.