Lina Laraki
Shinigami - Film - 14min - 2022
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 24
Film
Shinigami is a sensory investigation into the stomach of an assassin. What's in a monster's stomach?
The corpse of Demeo, a septuagenarian hitman, is found in the aquatic darkness. A frog enters his mouth and accompanies him in a delirious autopsy. As a bridge between life and death, a disillusioned and morally ambiguous investigator, the frog navigates its way through Demeo's ambiguities and takes us through the sometimes dark and sometimes vulnerable territories of human nature, between the real and subconscious times of memory.
The film is a labyrinth between scientific method, philosophical tale and iconography of murder and mystery. It carves a narrative arc in swirling furrows with imagery that is both conventional and abstract. Shinigami proposes an interpretation of death as a digestion in the underworld, flowing between genres.