Neither Heaven Nor Earth

(Ni le ciel ni la terre, Clément Cogitore, France/Belgium 2015, 100 min., DCP, French and Persian w/subtitles)

Rochester Premiere | (In)visibility. A French army captain and his squad are assigned to monitor a remote valley of Wakhan, Afghanistan, on the border of Pakistan. Negotiating control of the region between local shepherds and possible Taliban sympathizers grows more and more tenuous as men from all sides start mysteriously disappearing. Unable to explain this eerie phenomenon, the soldiers find themselves embroiled in an existential nightmare, desperate for their own safety, surrounded by an invisible and yet very palpable threat that originates primarily in their cultural and political ignorance. The Hollywood Reporter calls it a “gripping mash-up of Lone Survivor, The Thing, and The Blair Witch Project that pits a squad of French soldiers against a supernatural menace far deadlier than the Taliban.”