The Hyperboreans Review: A Cautionary Tale by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña on the Dangers of Political Forgetfulness

      Note: This review was initially published as part of our 2024 Cannes coverage. The Hyperboreans is now available for streaming on Film Movement+.

      "We humans are capable of greatness," proclaims the opening line of Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña’s The Hyperboreans, as the narrator's voice emanates from an old television. On screen, a hypnotic wheel continuously rotates, while the voice discusses evolution and “the energetic charge of ancestral blood.” These foreboding themes hint that the Chilean stop-motion animator and filmmaker duo continue to delve into religious symbolism and the ritual aspects of their Latin American heritage. Before the premiere of The Hyperboreans in this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, their 2021 short film The Bones received the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film in Venice, exploring a fictionalized legacy around colonial trauma. Their second feature (following 2018’s The Wolf House) persists in blending reality and fiction as a means to allegorize history.

      The scene transitions from the television to a wide overhead shot of a film set. Among the chaos of props, lights, fans, and costumes, a woman appears. She introduces herself as Antonia Giesen (played by the real Antonia Giesen), an actress and psychologist who serves as the audience’s guide through the 71 minutes of experimentation that is The Hyperboreans—a fantastical realm of theater, animation, history, and storytelling. Giesen’s psychology training and her discussions of her clients and her nation’s past imply that the film may be aiming to psychoanalyze Chile as a whole. León and Cociña utilize various aesthetics: their signature papier-mâché figures and illustrations, reenactments, cutouts, and black-and-white scenes create a world rich in multi-layered historical and fictional narratives.

      Defining national identity is complex, especially as a country's colonial history and its ongoing effects play a significant role in the interplay of Ego, Super Ego, and Id. Giesen, however, communicates with the viewer in more straightforward terms; for much of the film, she takes on the role of storyteller rather than analyst. This choice makes The Hyperboreans more approachable, without compromising its political insight. The storyline revolves around Giesen’s client Metalhead, or “Metalero” (Francisco Visceral), who has written a script. He claims, moreover, that this script was dictated to him by Miguel Serrano, a Chilean Nazi writer. Serrano emerges prominently in the film as a demonic figure, and The Hyperboreans features a fabricated biopic segment about his life.

      León and Cociña’s multimedia approach serves as an ideal medium for conveying a nuanced tale of discrimination and violence, continually shifting across time, space, and dimensions toward a fantastical conclusion. The duo’s work is profoundly rooted in religious symbolism, and The Hyperboreans draws heavily from the Ancient Greek mythological figures it references, believed to be the most northern people on earth. The Nazi implications are evident, but there is also a potent utopian aspect to this mythical idea. Hyperboreans were a significant symbol for Friedrich Nietzsche and esoteric authors like Robert Charroux, and through him, Miguel Serrano. Myths surrounding those "very large, very white" people have likely influenced many foundational stories of empires and nations; even today, TikTok reflects this trend with neo-Nazi users employing Hyperborean imagery and memes. León and Cociña, as usual, remain attuned to the zeitgeist, and their distinctly material approach to storytelling and the national psyche makes The Hyperboreans a powerful, experimental film that urges viewers to remember.

      The Hyperboreans had its premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.