SARAH WINCHESTER, PHANTOM OPERA

A film about ghosts and madness that is itself a kind of ghost, this short from master Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama, Saint Laurent, House of Pleasures) tells the story of Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune who was driven to insanity by unseen forces. But that may not be accurate, for Sarah Winchester, Phantom Opera is as much the story of a production that doesn’t exist – an incomplete work about a fractured life; a sumptuously layered and finely tuned meditation on artistic process and historical truth. To be lost in and perhaps never escape, Phantom Opera offers more in 24 minutes than many films three, four, five times its length.

Official Selection, New York Film Festival
Official Selection, DocLisboa Film Festival
Official Selection, San Sebastien Film Festival

"Stunning and beautiful." - Brooklyn Magazine

"A stimulating hybrid of historical essay, ghost story and site-responsive text... Beautifully controlled, tonally seductive [with] a teasing, tantalizing, expect-anything ambience." - Sight & Sound