A man chases windmills while nuclear plants loom—documentary or delusion? You decide.
In preparation for a feature-length film about windmills, an assistant director travels through the Vaud region to search for locations with windmills. The research leads to a serious engagement with the meaning and purpose of windmills, which has something Don Quixote-like about it in the age of nuclear power stations. The transitions between document and fiction flow constantly and result in a charming and intellectual mixture of seriousness and fun, determination and coincidence, weightlessness and the weight of meaning.
Direction
Soutter blurs document and fiction until neither matters.
Writing
Self-aware narration that mocks and celebrates itself simultaneously.
Director
Michel Soutter
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made in 1975 Switzerland as the nation debated nuclear energy, this quietly subversive film uses pastoral nostalgia to critique industrial modernity without ever mentioning politics directly.
Michel Soutter was part of the 'Groupe Cinématographique de Genève,' a collective that rejected commercial cinema for essay films—this explains why The Windmill feels like a charming fever dream about bureaucracy.
FR
CH
