Synopsis
What ever happened to Dreyer’s Joan of Arc? "Nitrate Flames" tells the story of Falconetti (1892-1946), the French actress that played the main part in the legendary silent film "The Passion of Joan of Arc" by Carl Th. Dreyer.
From the luminous glory years as a theater star in the Paris of the 1920s, to her obscure final days in the Buenos Aires of the 1940s, the documentary focuses especially in the collaboration between Falconetti and Dreyer during the making of Joan of Arc, and how this performance, her only apparition in cinema, made an impact in Falconetti’s life, to the extent that it overshadowed everything else she did, before or after, and also on the trail followed by Dreyer’s film, censored, mutilated, burnt and lost for decades, until the discovery by chance of an original negative in a Norwegian mental hospital in the early 1980s.
Director's bio
Based between Buenos Aires and Oslo, Mirko is a writer and director whose filmography includes the films "Havfruen om bord" (2021) and "El harperono" (2022).
