Chapter 10 examines Bazin’s ‘myth of total cinema’ in light of a major trend
in recent world cinema to focus on monumental landscapes, in films by
Byambsuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni (The Story of the Weeping Camel/
Ingen nulims, 2003), Abderrahmane Sissako (Timbuktu, 2014), Mikhail
Zvyagintsev (Leviathan/Leviafan, 2014), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Winter Sleep/
Kış uykusu, 2014), Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (Birds of Passage/
Pájaros de verano, 2018), and Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles
(Bacurau, 2019). Taken together, these films testify to the remarkable
convergence among filmmakers from the most disparate corners of the
globe in resorting to expansive landscapes as a totalising cosmos and a
sealed-off stage for the drama of existence, where realism manifests itself
by means of real locations.