Bliss Point – Films – Visions du Réel

Gerard Ortín Castellví
Italy, United Kingdom, Spain | 2023 | 26 min
International Premiere
Language : no dialogue

Gerard Ortín Castellví concludes his trilogy on the food we eat and the major transformations it continues to undergo. By delving into the gleaming workings of the distribution chain, Bliss Point elegantly eviscerates the well-oiled machinery of an industry for which nothing matters more than optimisation – certainly not human beings.

Following Future Foods (VdR 2021) and Agrilogistics (2022), Gerard Ortín Castellví concludes his trilogy on the food industry and the major upheavals brought about by technological "progress". The term "bliss point" refers to the precise dosage of an additive ingredient (sugar, salt or fat) required to fully optimise a product's palatability. It is this notion of fundamental optimisation intrinsic to capitalism that the filmmaker – not without irony – eviscerates with his compositions, which are every bit as slick and elegant as the advertising regime he decries. On the menu, an examination of recent developments in the uberisation and "autonomisation" of food storage using artificial intelligence, all delivered without narration, given the filmmaker's absolute confidence in the formidable effectiveness of his visual presentation. Bliss Point offers a mechanical and inhuman choreography of remarkable aesthetic and intellectual precision that reveals the underside of the inexhaustible demand on which our system is built. A genuine gut punch.
James Berclaz-Lewis

Bliss Point, 2023
Cold Route, 2023
Agrilogistics, 2022
Future Foods, 2021
Reserve, 2020
Perrolobo (Lycisca), 2017