Virginia Film Festival

A woman (Laura), a computer, an invisible interlocutor: such is the setup on which Level Five is built. While developing a video game centered on World War II’s Battle of Okinawa—a tragedy practically unknown in the West, Laura becomes increasingly drawn into her work. In researching more information about Okinawa, even from eye-witnesses to the battle, Laura gathers pieces of the tragedy, until they start to interfere with her own life. As the “levels” in Laura’s video game progress, she metaphorically adapts the structure of the game to life itself, gladly attributing levels to everything around her. Will she attain Level Five? This experimental chapter from the library of cinema legend Chris Marker (Le Joli Mai) is being released in the United States for the first time since it was made nearly twenty years ago.