Juliana Huxtable

An animal, representing all animals, on trial for crimes including “being disgusting,” in a dream-like confrontation between being and the law. Reflecting on the animal/human distinction, nature and second nature, continuity and collapse, Penumbra depicts a dream-like confrontation between being and the law.

The Life of Sean DeLear is a vibrantly multi-faceted, buoyantly propulsive documentary portrait of this irresistibly charismatic one-off — sketched in celebratory but commendably clear-eyed style by writer-director Markus Zizenbacher. There can be very few people better qualified to do justice to this particular tale. Zizenbacher befriended DeLear — born Anthony Robertson in Simi Valley, an obscure California backwater — after the latter relocated to Vienna in the early 2010s.

An animal, representing all animals, on trial for crimes including “being disgusting,” in a dream-like confrontation between being and the law. Reflecting on the animal/human distinction, nature and second nature, continuity and collapse, Penumbra depicts a dream-like confrontation between being and the law.

An animal, representing all animals, on trial for crimes including “being disgusting,” in a dream-like confrontation between being and the law. Reflecting on the animal/human distinction, nature and second nature, continuity and collapse, Penumbra depicts a dream-like confrontation between being and the law.

An animal, representing all animals, on trial for crimes including “being disgusting,” in a dream-like confrontation between being and the law. Reflecting on the animal/human distinction, nature and second nature, continuity and collapse, Penumbra depicts a dream-like confrontation between being and the law.

A conversation between a therapist and their client unfolds as a yellow ball swings back and forth. Replicating simple animations of online EMOR videos used to treat PTSD, the film feeds Octavia Butler's short story 'Bloodchild' through scripted therapeutic protocols, destabilising relations between coercion and consent, form and content, trauma and fiction.