THE FIFTH SHOT OF LA JETÉE (Dominique Cabrera, 2024)
@ First Look 2025
This spring, I wrote a review of a fascinating documentary that I saw at First Look 2025. The review is published at Reverse Shot, and you can read it here. Thanks to Michael Koresky and Jeff Reichert for their edits. It begins as follows:
At a recent screening of La Jetée, Chris Marker’s great 1962 science-fiction photo-novel, a man named Jean-Henri Cabrera was struck by an image of a man, woman, and child watching the airplanes at France’s Orly airport. The three subjects were photographed from behind, so their faces weren’t visible, but some nagging feeling told him that, somehow, it was a picture of him and his parents. He sent this “fifth shot of La Jetée” to his filmmaker cousin Dominique Cabrera for her opinion, and she was so captivated by this possibility that she was inspired to make a film investigating it.