The creators of this experimental essay introduced the film by saying, “Fear of the unknown, fear of the dark, fear of the enemy, fear of death since the beginnings of mankind have been both a driving force of humanity as well as a stumbling block. It is an instinctive force that has made humanity join up in communities in search of safety and shelter from a danger lurking in the darkness, however the finality of things is always inevitable. How does one overcome fear of their own fatality?”

In Ancient Greek mythology, Thanatos is the personification of death — the winged god in the black cloak usually came to the dying person to cut off a lock of hair and take the soul away. His arrival was not predictable — Ieva Balode and Michael Higgins revisit this sum of unknowable premonitions in a film shot on 16mm: what are the codes of our phobias, and do they have certain rhythms, beats and visual sounds? Balode is an analogue media artist and the founder of Baltic Analog Lab, who reflected on the phobias of society in her solo exhibition Loop of Fear at the Latvian National Museum of Art earlier this year. Higgins is a photographer, filmmaker and installation artist whose work has been shown almost all over the world.