Samsara

Cert U

January 9th 2025

Winner Encounters Award – Special Jury Prize Berlin International Film Festival 2023

Director : Lois Patiño
Cast:  Amid Keomany, Toumor Xiong, Simone Milavanh
Country: Spain.    Lao, Swahili (English subtitles) 114 minutes

UK release date: July 2024

Every morning, a young man in Laos visits an elderly woman’s home to read to her The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a guide for the journey between death and the next rebirth. He befriends several young monks from the nearby monastery, who accompany a soul in transit from one body to another through the bardo (the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth). The woman, meanwhile, is ready to take leave of her present existence. A luminous, meditative and sonorous journey leads to reincarnation on the beaches of Zanzibar.

“All great cinema is a journey of sorts, but there comes a point when it feels as though film-makers are treading the same well-worn paths. Not so with Spanish director Lois Patiño’s remarkable immersive voyage Samsara: part Film, part guided meditation, it’s unlike anything else you can experience in the cinema.” Wendy Ide, The Observer

“Lois Patiño’s film is a delicate, exotic contrivance, a docu-realist diptych spectacle using nonprofessional actors, about the Buddhist concept of “Samsara”, the cycle of birth, death and life, and the transmigration of souls.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian