The film, which is more than just a story, evokes a few moments torn from the apathy of a city. The harbor city, this small seaside capital of a Mediterranean country, has been abandoned by most of the inhabitants. A journalist on the radio reports of chaos, confusion, a state of emergency in the city. A man at a window looks out at the sea, hears the noises of the city—and fears the worst ...
A ship docks, and it may be the last one.
The title of the film—En derive (“Drifting”) reflects a multifaceted feeling:a country losing control, in the midst of a process of political dissolution, dominated by latent violence; the gliding movement of the camera passing over the ocean to the site of the drama and stopping at the protagonist of the story; the man’s feeling of drifting as he sits at the window with nowhere to flee—except to the horizon of the sea.
The film’s computer generated images were created with a 3D program. The computer generated image, that is neither animation nor painting nor cinema, opens up an amazing space, in which the real and the imaginary collide. For me, En derive is a first attempt in this direction.

Patrice Mugnier (FR) is an architect and created the film in the course of training at the Atelier Image et Informatique (AII). He also worked as a stage set designer and as assistant to the exhibition director at the Centre Georges Pompidou. He is currently working on another film project and as a freelance graphics artist, as well as teaching computer graphics.