Swimming Home

Swimming Home

TIFF65: Greek Premiere
When a family arrives at their villa in a remote coastal village, they find a stranger floating in their swimming pool. The mysterious woman with green fingernails claims to be a botanist and her lingering presence comes to emphasise the distance that already exists between the parents, war-correspondent Isabel and melancholic poet Joe. Tensions mount, temperatures rise and a perfect vacation transforms into a perilous spectacle, magnified by the beauty of the landscape that it erupts across. Acclaimed writer Deborah Levy’s 2011 novel makes for an unsettling feature. Like the novel, Justin Anderson’s accomplished debut skirts the fringes of genre, dipping its toes into psychodrama and horror, while remaining a singular take on the dynamics of a pathologically dysfunctional family. With a dash of humour and absurdity, his script zeroes in on the pain of unspoken grievances and barely concealed desires. Mackenzie Davis and Christopher Abbott impress as a couple barely holding on to the tenuous thread of their relationship, as does Nadine Labaki as a family friend caught up in the maelstrom, Ariane Labed gives a performance of unbridled corporeality as the stranger, the ambiguity of her presence soon giving way to something more tangible and infernal.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Justin Anderson
Script: Justin Anderson
Cinematography: Simos Sarketzis
Editing: Napoleon Stratogiannakis
Sound: Nardi van Dijk
Music: Coti K
Actors: Christopher Abbott, Mackenzie Davis, Ariane Labed, Nadine Labaki, Freya Hannan-Mills
Production: Anti-Worlds, Quiddity Films, Heretic
Producers: Emily Morgan, Andy Starke, Giorgos Karnavas, Marcos Tellechea, Paula Linhares
Co-production: Lemming Film
Co-producers: Leontine Petit, Erik Glijnis
Production Design: Myrte Beltman
Executive producer: Phil Hunt, Compton Ross, Stephen Kelliher, Sophie Green, Harriet Guy, Emily Morgan, Charles Peel, Victoria Castelli, Arthur Farache, Konstantinos Kontovrakis, Guilherme Schwartsmann, Elora Thevenet, Christopher Abbott, Ariane Labed
Color: Color
Production Country: UK, Greece, Netherlands, Brazil
Production Year: 2024
Duration: 100'
Contact: Bankside Films

Justin Anderson

Justin Anderson trained as a painter at the Slade School in London, where he won the John Ruskin painting prize, but it was whilst he studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam under a scholarship that he began working in video. Anderson has directed commercials for Schweppes, Heineken, Levi’s, New York City Ballet and Fashion Films for Roksanda, Vogue, Armani and Johnathan Saunders. His awards include the 2012 Berlin Fashion Film Festival’s Best Film and the 2014 ASVOFF Pompidou’s Grand Prix for JUMPER. Swimming Home (2024) is selected for the Tiger Competition at IFFR 2024.

Filmography

2014 Jumper (short)
2016 The Idyll (short)
2024 Swimming Home