“I read the book of the river. (...) It is not vanity. (...) You will never reach the end of your own becoming, the madness of creation, the joy of existence”. Awakening Osiris, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, 1550-1069 BC.

Our first object of investigation and care must be life. We know the reason for this, for we are living beings in a situation where the conditions of life are at risk. What has no place in this ecological discourse is death. The fact that death is difficult to acknowledge is not new, but in our contemporary situation, death has a new face. “Gold and Ashes” goes beyond representation to become an intimate act of excavation that seeks to mediate – materially, politically, and metaphysically – the reappropriation of death as a power and our sovereignty as mortal beings in both private and social spheres. The film also speculates on the implications of representing trauma and the aesthetics of disappearance.