Could you watch a film inside a coffin?

Every work­ing crit­ic has lived the night­mare of being trapped with a movie, of want­i­ng noth­ing more than to escape and yet being unable to flee the the­atre out of pro­fes­sion­al oblig­a­tion. Now, a film fes­ti­val in Swe­den wants to pro­vide an even more intense sim­u­lacrum of the expe­ri­ence for any­one inter­est­ed in best­ing their claustrophobia.

The Göte­borg Film Fes­ti­val has announced an unlike­ly method for atten­dees to take in the sci-fi film Aniara. The adap­ta­tion of Har­ry Martinson’s cel­e­brat­ed poem will play at the fes­ti­val nor­mal­ly after hav­ing pre­miered last year in Toron­to, but a few lucky guests will be select­ed at ran­dom to see the film while sealed in what the fes­ti­val coor­di­na­tors have cho­sen to call a ​“sar­coph­a­gus”.

Though with­out the whole ​“Egypt­ian bur­ial rites” aspect, they’re real­ly more like box­es – albeit box­es equipped with A/V equip­ment, air vents, and a ​“pan­ic but­ton” for those view­ers who start to feel the pale spec­tre of death clos­ing in on them.

The expe­ri­ence has been designed to repli­cate the extra­or­di­nary con­di­tions of Martinson’s text, which sees human­i­ty leav­ing the spent remains of our plan­et on a fleet of dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed space­ships. Look­ing back at the dying Earth on the jour­ney to their new home on Mars, the sur­viv­ing homo sapi­ens start to lose touch with all that makes us peo­ple, and the movie-cas­ket offers a lit­tle taste of that same iso­la­tion to intre­pid watchers.

As exhi­bi­tion con­tin­ues to diver­si­fy with bou­tique table-ser­vice and 4DX the­atres that douse tick­et hold­ers with faux rain, per­haps this rep­re­sents the next log­i­cal step in full immer­sion. It’s only a mat­ter of time until A24 announces that all future screen­ings of Gas­par Noé’s upcom­ing Cli­max will be con­duct­ed as LCD-laced hell-raves.

The Göte­borg Film Fes­ti­val runs 25 Jan­u­ary to 4 Feb­ru­ary. For more info vis­it gote​borgfilm​fes​ti​val​.se