23.04.24, 20:30, Vox Lux (2018)

With the bursting at the seams Vox Lux, filmmaker Bradey Corbet poses the hardly obvious but intriguing question: if pop culture is constantly politicised and politically mediatised, what happens when we very explicitly link pop music and terrorism? Vox Lux goes far beyond the shadow side of pop music littered with drugs, depression and sex, adding not only a sociological but even a transcendent layer. Right through all the pop extravaganza, this hyper-contemporary dissection of celebrity culture, backed by Willem Dafoe's mystical narrator, suggests that the connections between mass media, mass consumption and mass murder may not have to be so far-fetched at all.

At the time, the film lost out to pop star counterpart A Star is Born (2018) and blew by without much noise. Film Plateau deems the time has come for a much-needed reappraisal. Whether you will find the multitude of impressions off the mark to be toe-curling or awe-inspiringly insane is impossible to predict, but one thing is certain: you have never seen a film like Vox Lux before.

This film will be introduced by media scholar Ben De Smet.