¡Vivan las Antípodas!

Like a nonfiction Alfonso Cuarón, Kossakovsky uses ingenious technique to create cinematic poetry. To actualise the theme of the antipode, images are often upside down or sideways; reflections in lakes can be of cities thousands of miles away.

The rare land-to-land antipodes include rural Entre Rios, Argentina and urban Shanghai, peaceful Patagonia, Chile and mountainous Lake Baikal, Russia, volcanic Hawaii and the jungles of Botswana, rocky Miraflores, Spain and Castle Point, New Zealand, where a whale has washed up onto a beach. It’s a cosmic, lovely, sensual film, as consistently interested in blowing your mind as Godfrey Reggio’s over-celebrated works, but always rooted in the primary building block of nonfiction: acute observation of people and place.