Honored with the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, an ode to a sophisticated decadence which, according to Serra, has European roots. Because only here society, thanks to libertine values, dared to put the aesthetics of pleasure above morality. I wanted to make a film about the night, said the director, not one that takes place at night, but a film about the logic of the night that changes our perception, moral principles, everything. A film about the utopia of sexual liberation, when the differences between people disappear: there are no women and men, no servants and masters, beautiful and ugly. About a perfect, strange, dark utopia, brotherhood of bodies. At night, in the wilderness, like on a stage, representatives of the 18th-century French aristocracy and their foreign guests meet among the decorations to indulge in a role-playing orgy. Immersed in the darkness, amid whispers and groans, they will face their own and others' greed, they will confront denudation, compulsion and desire. On the way to "full life" they will cross new borders.

text: New Horizons