Radiance

In its opening moments, Radiance begins with a whirlwind of shots in barely a couple of seconds, an incessant flow of mainly domestic images: food, toys, insects, flowers, clouds, rain, lights, shade and above all the director’s daughter. The filmmaker’s voice reads like a letter to his friends, explaining what we are going to see: during lockdown, from April 2020, he decided to film every day with no greater purpose than recording the time he spent with his family. For a whole year, he recorded everyday images, limited by the distance of his gaze, from cookery bowls used to knead cookie dough as far as the twilight horizon glimpsed through the fence around his house. 
 
Watching Radiance is like looking at an annotated scrapbook: his intuitive and suggestive editing constructs a small, fantastic universe both delicately and tenderly, demonstrating that our capability for discovery and astonishment is limitless. The voice-over speaks to his friends and his loved ones (some who have died, others recently born), to himself and, finally, to all of us, while he modestly reflects with his heart on his sleeve about life, death, love and memory.

Miguel Zozaya