Marine Target

Lukas Marxt offers a disquieting exploration of the Salton Sea – a site haunted by traces of catastrophic US nuclear testing. The images and sounds, at first, feign impersonality: as a drone camera slowly descends to a small, long-abandoned marine target in the water, a sober female voice rattles off the dry, official, military facts. The sights of dead birds, wire fences that lead to voids, and ominously broken pipelines hint at a darker backstory. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)