Pneuma, πνεῦμα⧵’pneu̯.ma⧵neutre. 1. Breath: breath of the wind, expiration of air, respiration. 2. Divine breath: Divine spirit, Holy Ghost. 3. Warm air that brings life.

In ancient Greek culture, the logos and cosmos were not separate, but formed a cultivated whole. This may have been what our life in the Garden of Eden was like: a celebration of nature, including our own, as a divine gift, before we aspired to appropriate knowledge of good and evil. At what moment in their evolution, and in the name of what necessity did humans break with nature, and with themselves as nature?

Pneuma is a film-essay, a cross between experimental fiction and documentary divided up into three chapters, which interrogates the deep foundations of our western culture through a critical genealogy of our relation to the vegetal. Taking a biographical detour, the director links the personal and the political and makes palpable the links between the Christian heritage and the advent of capitalism. This produced what Starwhak describes as the culture of distancing, a culture that still characterises the modern world. At a time when life is threatened on all sides, when alterity is experienced through the prism of power and fear, this film attempts to reverse the narrative of a tradition that is unfaithful to life, in which each person is condemned to be in exile from themself.

When vegetable life is seen to move by the naked eye, when men are grabbing hold of trees and toxic plants are taking revenge on humanity, it looks as if our place in the cosmos needs to be reclaimed. We urgently need to (re)invent a multi-species “us.”