Begotten

Edmund Elias Merhige's Begotten is an extraordinary, hypnotic journey through birth, death and passing. In a world devoid of human presence, matter constantly passes into other forms, and life emerges from decay to succumb to it again.

The film is reminiscent of the dark, primordial myth of creation, suffering and transformation — a story more intuitive than fictional, immersed in images and symbols.
Filmed on black and white tape, devoid of dialogues and traditional narration, the film resembles a found artifact of an unknown civilization.

The grainy, almost material picture evokes silent cinema, the painting of Bosch, Munch and Goa, as well as the aesthetics of the Japanese butō theater.

Merhige does not tell a story in the classical sense — he creates an audiovisual ritual in which body, nature and matter become a source of both fascination and horror. Begotten escapes genre classifications: it is at once a horror, a myth of creation and rebirth, and a suggestive vision of the biological dimension of existence.