Destiny

Destiny is a fantasy short film directed by Fabien Weibel and produced at Bellecour Ecole d’Art about a man who tries to change his own fate. The short deals with universal themes such as time and destiny with a supernatural twist: it plays an additive game with narrative points of view. The result is disconcerting for the viewer, and brings increased tension to the film’s conflict as the story progresses.

After the first crash the character seems to be waking up from a dream, and what was shown before as omniscient storytelling is re-contextualized as his subjective narration. But soon enough he shows up again in the scene, duplicated. Once again the narrative POV is re-contextualized, the story is being now told from the POV of a character who sees himself on his way to an accident, propelling the story into the supernatural realm.

The situation keeps repeating, adding more instances of the same character (and POVs of narration), as the character tries to change the course of events. In order to raise tension visual and sound rhythm is heightened. In the first part cameras are usually static, and as the film advances they start moving and increase in speed. The sound is also key to setting the mood, signaling the supernatural elements, raising tension and complementing the slow motion camera effects.

The final scenes bring a break to the heightened pace, introducing a nice sensory image (the character breathing deeply, bathed by sunlight), and according to the authors offers a message to the viewer regarding the importance of how we deal with time, and on understanding the significance of enjoying the simple things in life.

The concept of the short film was strongly influenced by Harold Ramis’ film “Groundhog Day”.