Surreal formations, stalactites, rocks moulded by water and poisonous bubbling. The images that turn into an exploration of her own soul for Paula Ďurinová seem like a dream landscape. Grief plays a key role – Ďurinová’s grandparents both died during the Covid pandemic. She looks for them between the gases and fumes, dives through a body of water that has ceased to exist but in whose cool freshness her grandfather once bathed his feet and across which she used to swim with her grandmother.
“Lapilli” works in an associative and abstract way. At the same time, the minerals recovered by Ďurinová have something very concrete about them: compressed, buckled and broken, sharp-edged, corroded or gently polished. At one point, the director compares herself to a stone detached from its rock, questioning and without orientation, drifting around: “I don’t feel the ground anymore.” “Lapilli” leaves no doubt that feelings of pain and helplessness can harbour greater strength, but also a very special poetry and beauty. The interplay with an organic experimental soundscape opens up an intimate, almost universal experience.