Festivals - Gerardmer 2021 : Mosquito state will be screened in official competition

By Mulder, 21 january 2021

“ For all the vampiric bloodletting in genre films, I felt like the mosquito, man’s deadliest enemy, was thoroughly unexplored and, after reading Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys, I became fascinated by those hidden away “quants” who made high-frequency trading go. This unlikely pairing became the basis for Mosquito State. 2007 was the year I moved to Los Angeles. It now feels distant, but also strangely immediate. Many cultural events have fused with post Y2K banality, but I still recall holding the first-gen iPhone as if it were my first born. In addition to the iPhone, the first week of August saw Barry Bonds break baseball’s all-time home run record, Rupert Murdoch purchase the Wall Street Journal, The Apprentice with Donald Trump enter its fifth season, author Nassim Taleb appear on Charlie Rose to discuss his book Black Swan, a young senator named Barack Obama speak of growing divisiveness at the Democratic Presidential Debate, and BNP Paribas cite “a complete evaporation of liquidity,” kicking off the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Canaries in coal mines and mosquitos in the streets.” - Filip Jan Rymsza

Born in 1977 in Olecko, Poland, Filip Jan Rymsza studied philosophy and economics at the University of Chicago. He completed Orson Welles' unfinished film, The Other Side of the Wind, which was presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2019. He won numerous awards for his work on this film, including the Film Heritage Award from the National Society of Film Critics. He also produced Hopper/Welles, a recording of an intimate conversation between Dennis Hopper and Orson Welles that took place in the 1970s. Mosquito State is his third feature film.

Synopsis :
August 2007. Richard Boca, a Wall Street analyst who lives alone in a luxurious apartment with a breathtaking view of Central Park, relentlessly exploits financial data and begins to have sinister visions. His computer models behave in a disorderly fashion as swarms of mosquitoes invade his penthouse. These strange manifestations begin to play on his mental health...

Mosquito state
Directed by Filip Jan Rymsza
Produced by Filip Jan Rymsza, Wlodzimierz Niderhaus & Alyssa Swanzey
Written by Filip Jan Rymsza, Mario Zermeno
Starring Beau Knapp, Charlotte Vega, Jack Kesy, Olivier Martinez, Audrey Wasilewski, Daisy Bishop
Music by Cezary Skubiszewski
Cinematography: Eric Koretz
Edited by Andrew Hafitz, Bob Murawski & Wojciech Janas
Production companies : WFDiF
Running time: 100 minutes

(Source: press release)