Set against the gorgeous landscape of Armenia, Here chronicles a brief but intense relationship between an American satellite-mapping engineer (Foster) and an expatriate photographer (Azabal) who impulsively decide to travel across the remote countryside. As their trip comes to an end, the two must decide where to go from here.
Braden King will be familiar to those of you who saw his mesmerisingly poetic documentary Dutch Harbour: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back (screened in the LFF in 1998), and chances are that if you have any interest in such musicians as Sonic Youth or Will Oldham or the Dirty Three, you'll have seen his imaginative music videos. King brings an interrogative approach and an aesthete's eye to HERE, a feature film that is part road-movie, part love-story and part an investigation of cinema itself. Will (Ben Foster) is an American satellite mapping engineer on a solo 'ground-truthing' assignment. Gadarine (Lubna Azabal) is an expat Armenian photographer on her first visit to her home country in years. When she comes to his aid in an out-of-the-way hotel, these two fiercely independent people strike up a conversation and impulsively decide to travel together. What follows takes them both into uncharted territory, emotionally as well as geographically. The film's multi-layered approach makes map-makers of us all, and working with cinematographer Lol Crawley and regular musical collaborators Michael Krassner and the Boxhead Ensemble, King provides us with extraordinarily rich terrain to explore.
