Memory Room

In 1946, a young forester was dispatched to the north of Finland to find trees large enough to serve as electricity poles in Ireland. The only surviving record of his hazardous mission are a few telegrams he sent to the home front. Directors Feargal Ward and Adrian Duncan literally follow in his footsteps in this tough trek through the subarctic wilderness, captured in dreamlike, hallucinatory scenes. The fantastic soundscape with high-pitched, sparse tones only intensifies the sense of desolation and mystery.

Virgin snow is everywhere, filling the screen. Then we see a man pulling a sled with a rope tied around his middle, his skis pushing stripe after stripe into the vast expanse of whiteness. The tree trunks lie in long rows under a layer of snow, but his journey seems aimless and doomed to failure. As he plows onwards, he becomes a ghostly figure in the half-darkness, at the edge of the world.