Apostles

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Once again drawing from a very personal place, Scud’s eighth film Apostles does away with a certain kind of nostalgia. As in Voyage (2012), Utopians (2016) and Thirty Years of Adonis (2017), Apostles reaches into the deep and dark crevices of the human mind to reflect on the meaning and value of life by exploring death and what comes after. Claiming to be an apostle of Socrates and Plato, a scholar forms a cult-like circuit of twelve beautiful young men in a secluded estate to pursue this quandary.

With a narrative organised more like a stream of fragmentary visual statements and thoughts, shuffling past, present and future, Apostles gnaws on religions, the concept of karma, ghosts and the afterlife – all of which also enter the game. Nude young men wander the estate, climb mountains, lose themselves in the woods, talk and participate in various rituals and mythic re-enactments that constitute a physical, emotional and sexual journey. In the end, the group must decide which apostle will get to experience death in the form of sacrifice. Herein the film steers true to its alternative title: ‘Platonic Death’, and to Scud’s appetite for subversive, disturbing and still serenely beautiful films.