Chronovisor

One of the year’s most striking experimental feature debuts, Chronovisor quickly became the breakout sensation of the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam. Shot on 16mm, this armchair mystery is steeped in the spirit of Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco. A researcher, played by academic Anne-Laure Sellier, becomes obsessed with the true story of Benedictine monk Pellegrino Ernetti. In the 1950s, he claimed to have seen the crucifixion of Christ, as well as speeches by Cicero and Napoleon, using the chronovisor: a machine said to be capable of retrieving any moment from world history via waves and displaying it on a television screen.

A bricolage of books, cassettes, footnotes, translations and VHS tapes constitutes the visual centre of gravity around which the fictional story orbits. A radical cinematic form that recalls experimental classics by Chris Marker (La Jetée), Michael Snow (So Is This), David Gatten and Nam June Paik.

At Film Fest Gent, we present four screenings of Chronovisor:

• Thursday 8 October, 17:00 – Studio Skoop
• Monday 12 October, 19:45 – Sphinx Cinema
• Tuesday 13 October, 17:15 – Sphinx Cinema
• Thursday 15 October, 22:30 – Kinepolis