SYNOPSIS

1976: Berberian Sound Studio is one of the cheapest, sleaziest post-production studios in Italy. Only the most sordid horror films have their sound processed and sharpened in this studio. Gilderoy, a naive and introverted sound engineer from England is hired to orchestrate the sound mix for the latest film by horror maestro, Santini. Thrown from the innocent world of local documentaries into a foreign environment fuelled by exploitation, Gilderoy soon finds himself caught up in a forbidding world of bitter actresses, capricious technicians and confounding bureaucracy.

The longer Gilderoy spends mixing screams and the bloodcurdling sounds of hacked vegetables, the more homesick he becomes for his garden shed studio in his hometown of Dorking. His mother’s letters alternate between banal gossip and an ominous hysteria, which gradually mirrors the black magic of Santini’s film. As both time and realities shift, Gilderoy finds himself lost in an otherworldly spiral of sonic and personal mayhem, and has to confront his own demons in order to stay afloat in an environment ruled by exploitation both on and off screen.



DIRECTOR: Peter Strickland

Born in 1973, Reading, UK. Strickland's first feature film, Katalin Varga was shot entirely independently in 2006 and later went on to win many awards including a Silver Bear in Berlin and The European Film Academy's Discovery of the Year award in 2009. Katalin Varga screened at festivals throughout the world and was sold in many territories.

Prior to Katalin Varga, Strickland made a number of short films and produced several records of abstract music, field recordings and spoken word.


Filmography as a director
2009 - Katalin Varga