Letter from Eusapia

Filmmaker Andres Cornejo Pinto sends cameras through the sewers of Brussels. He mainly records sewage and rats, but he mixes this report of his everyday work with a story about the underground city of Eusapia, illustrated by archive footage. During the Cold War, it was said to have stored artworks. But a simultaneous experiment with mushroom cultivation proved fatal for some of the artistic treasures.

While the filmmaker explores the depths of Brussels with robotic cameras, his father in Ecuador similarly explores the innermost parts of the human body as he performs advanced keyhole surgery. However, the surgeon is powerless when a virus emerges for which there is no cure, and patients—including his own sister—die en masse in the hospital.

Father and son are connected by telephone, bridging the distance between continents, and between the pseudo-mythological Eusapia in decline and the current Covid-19 pandemic. Existential questions about life, death, and “being at home” hang heavy in the air.