Grief is a killer, and one film coming to Fantastic Fest this year is taking that literally. Transgressive Production released the first trailer for The Ones Who Grieve, a new period drama set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Europe.
Directed by Quarxx, the French-language film stars Thierry Frémont, Zélie Rixhon, Isabelle Anciaux and Jean-Baptiste Maunier. The film’s synopsis is as follows:
In a countryside ravaged by the mysterious “Black Veil,” seventeen-year-old Zélie lives under the oppressive rule of her father Jacob, a self-proclaimed “Masker” who enforces brutal purification rituals on the sick. Zélie's mother Emily, trapped in compulsive hunger and emotional dependence, sends her to a neighboring farm, where she meets Jane, concealing a terrible secret, and Carmin, haunted by his own demons.
Zélie discovers Gabriel, a wounded, infected soldier hiding in the barn. He offers to kill Jacob. She agrees, but the plan collapses when Jacob uncovers the betrayal and punishes her mercilessly. Jacob's fanaticism triggers a chain of irreversible tragedies as strange Tesla towers rise across the countryside, heralding electricity as salvation while plunging the world further into darkness.
“The Ones Who Grieve is, above all, a film about control,” says Quarxx. “An intimate, insidious form of control that begins within the family unit and gradually contaminates the entire social body. The starting point is neither fear nor the fantastic, but a far more difficult violence to confront: forbidden desire, enforced silence, and domination exercised in the name of moral, paternal, and religious authority.
“The nineteenth-century setting is not a backdrop but an oppressive structure. Family, religion, and science function as systems of control capable of transforming intimate violence into social norm… This is not a film about creatures, but about toxic legacies: where evil does not arrive from the outside, but is born at the very heart of what is supposed to protect.”
The Ones Who Grieve premieres at this month’s Fantastic Fest on September 18. Stay tuned to FANGORIA for more updates.
