A woman walks barefoot over jagged rocks by the sea in a location we can’t quite place immediately. Wearing a white dress, her face is hidden beneath the brim of a floppy hat. She walks and walks, sometimes carrying a large jute bag over her shoulder. In his new feature, the black-and-white Trillion, filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky tells a minimalist story, but he is hoping for maximum impact.
Described as “a cinematic and wordless interpretation of the Myth of Sisyphus” in collaboration with an artist using the name K49814, Trillion world premieres Sunday in the Envision Competition of this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Its executive producers include none other than Joaquin Phoenix, along with Susan Rockefeller, Frank Lehmann, Fridrik Mar and Kaja Bjelke.
What unfolds in Trillion over 80 wordless minutes feels like a mystery and an experience, enticing viewers to try and piece together what is happening and why, based on visual clues, including the images and the play of light, and audio clues, both natural and atmospheric.
Given Kossakovsky’s past work, though, you know that he will want to make us aware of something profound and make us think about it. An official description of Trillion confirms as much, noting that the movie is “the second installment of his ’empathy trilogy.’” And it explains the filmmaker’s hope for the impact of Trillion this way: “Provoking deeply relevant questions about the meaning and purpose of life in a time when all sentient beings face existential threat.”
Kossakovsky has made a splash with such recent works as Gunda (2020), about a pig and her piglets that was the first film in his “empathy trilogy,” which Phoenix also executive produced. And in Architekton (2024), the director explored creation and destruction.
“Trillion is also a call to action: a journey of discovery that prompts reflection on the possibilities of realizing a different future,” the IDFA website says mysteriously.
As with Gunda, Phoenix is listed as an executive producer on Trillion. And when the closing credits roll, Danny Glover and Maya Rudolph are among the other big Hollywood names mentioned in a “thank you” section. “They were involved in the production in one way or another,” Kossakovsky tells THR. Anonymous Content is handling world sales for the film from Anita Rehoff Larsen and Tone Grottjord-Glenne for Sant & Usant, and Joslyn Barnes for Louverture Films.
So, what exactly is this woman in Trillion doing? And why? That only becomes clear very, very gradually. “Only at the last second, you understand,” says the Russian director. “In the last frame, you know why it’s called Trillion and what it is about.” (THR will for now not spoil further details.)
He feels doc festival IDFA is a great fit for his kind of doc work. “When you go to a fiction festival like Berlin or Venice, you are secondary,” he says. “People waiting on the red carpet for George Clooney.”
Kossakovsky says that “every film I make, I’m trying to make differently in form.” But he has earned a reputation for using narrative images more than dialogue. “I’m not using many words in my movies,” he acknowledges. “I’m trying to use cinema language. I’m trying to use pictures. A picture alone talks most of the time. Our eyes are unbelievable computers. We are able to look at someone and read that other person. This is why I don’t understand why cinema, specifically documentary cinema, doesn’t use this factor.”
He adds: “We understand the world not through voiceovers and talking heads. It’s not through words. We understand the world around us through looking.”
Watching Trillion, audiences will see images and movement, but “in a way, nothing much is happening,” Kossakovsky offers. “The idea is to watch to the last frame. My duty was [to make sure] that you sit and watch until the end.” And he quips: “That’s why I trick people. I use this dramatic music” in parts of the film.
The director shares that his distinct approach to documentary filmmaking means he also tends to be notably affected by his projects. “Some people make documentaries in order to teach someone something,” Kossakovsky explains. “And that’s why they use a voiceover to tell you something. I’m making films in order to become a different person.”
He means that literally. “I’m doing a film, and after that film, I cannot live in the same way I lived before,” the director shares.
Asked about his empathy trilogy, Kossakovsky tells THR: “I decided to to make three films about something we don’t pay attention to.” In Gunda, he tackled that in this way: “We don’t pay attention to pigs. We just eat them.”
How did Phoenix get involved in that film? “He watched Gunda, and he immediately called me and said, ‘Finally, someone made a film about pigs, not about us humans,’” Kossakovsky recalls. “He watched it and said, ‘I want to support such movies.’” Now, the actor is back on board for Trillions.
But the filmmaker is already thinking about the third film in the trilogy. “I cannot say anything about it, because it’s still secret, but I will start soon,” Kossakovsky shares. “And I hope Joaquin Phoenix will be part of it as well.”
‘Trillion’ world premiere details: Sunday, November 16 at 6:15 pm at Tuschinski 1 in Amsterdam