So what would you do with the ten hours before the end of the world?
That's the concept behind director Abel Ferrara's new movie, '4:44 Last Day on Earth", which explores how we'd behave knowing death was coming to us all in an environmental disaster.
Willem Dafoe plays a successful actor, while Shanyn Leigh portrays his partner, an artist, in her first lead role.
The couple bicker, cry, eat and have sex as zero hour approaches -- in this case 4:44am.
Rather than reflecting the shock of first learning of the end, the movie is set instead when people have accepted their fate....a device the director said made it more universal.
SOUNDBITE, Abel Ferrara, Director, saying:
"So the idea, this is the last ten hours, all right, where is everybody, who are you going to call, who are you not going to call, what are you going to do, what are you not going to do you know. It's kind of like, all these ideas of, oh, we will do it tomorrow is out the window you know and it puts like an immediacy to everything and everyone's life. But then, you, know, what are gonna do, climb Mount Everest? I mean, basically, people just live their lives you know."
For Dafoe's character there is also a choice -- whether to reach the end sober or high on drugs....
UPSOUND OF FILM: "If there's ever a time to get high it's now."
SOUNDBITE, Willem Dafoe, actor, saying:
"It's a very adult movie in the respect that it's about saying, what do you do? And do you take responsibility for your life? Do you take responsibility for those you love? And I think that's interesting."
The movie, one of 23 in the main competition at the Venice film festival, had its world premiere as the annual cinema showcase enters the final stretch ahead of Saturday's awards.
Edward Baran, Reuters.
