Filmmaker Fabrice Aragno with his painterly work "Le Lac" in Locarno

The first feature film by Neuchâtel director Fabrice Aragno, "Le Lac" is bold. The audiovisual narrative works entirely without dialog. "That wasn't a choice on my part, it's completely natural," Aragno told the Keystone-SDA news agency. For him, cinema is above all an art of image and sound - similar to music or painting.

Inspired by a five-day sailing regatta on Lake Geneva, the film follows the clash between a couple and nature. And it shows the exhaustion that this confrontation brings with it: "You become an animal. You no longer sleep. You feel everything more intensely," said the director.

Saying the unsayable

"Le Lac" is more of a sensory experience than a simple narrative. "I wanted to express what cannot be said. What happens is between the words, between the pauses of silence," said Aragno. And so here, silence becomes language and the camera becomes a paintbrush.

There is something literally painterly about this intimate film experience. "All painters stayed on the shore," said Aragno. He was inspired by Caspar David Friedrich, Edvard Munch, William Turner and Hergé, for example. "I want to go into the picture."

Literature also inspires Aragno as a filmmaker. He mentions Marguerite Duras, Gustave Flaubert and Heinrich von Kleist, for example. And so Fabrice Aragno has left the traditional screenplay structure behind him. He built his film from notes, images and striking sentences.

The original screenplay was "burned". Because of this approach, the film was selected for the Atelier de la Cinéfondation at the Cannes Film Festival in 2021, shortly after the pandemic. Makers of promising film projects are invited to take part in this funding program.

The creative phase lasted eight years. On the one hand, the Covid-19 pandemic intervened. Secondly, the renowned French-Swiss director and screenwriter Jean-Luc Godard (1939-2022), with whom Aragno had worked closely for many years, passed away.

From sailor to actor

Fabrice Aragno was looking for a Swiss actor for "Le Lac", but could hardly imagine two actors on a sailing boat. It was Bernard Stamm, a Swiss sailor, whom he discovered by chance and contacted.

"I called him because I thought he was on the high seas, but he was in a shopping center," Aragno recalled. He went to Brest with him and the actress Clothilde Courau and did test recordings. "It was perfect."

Sound takes up the central space in the film - without illustrative music, but as an auditory landscape: winds, breaths and breathing create the mood. "Le Lac" celebrates its world premiere today (August 14) in Locarno.