Constructing an immersive cinematic world where tensions rise and strangers are forced to confront their true nature, Australian filmmaker and artist Daniel Askill transplants an ensemble cast – and his viewers – to a remote compound in Australia’s ancient Daintree Rainforest for Lunacy. A film and installation experience, improvised over a three-week period – and produced by Collider, See Pictures and Heckler –, the unscripted project follows six strangers invited to a rainforest retreat, soon realizing they are inexplicably unable to leave when their mysterious host fails to materialize.

Partly inspired by Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, and scored by These New Puritans and Matteo Zingales, the film features performances by Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Isabel Lucas, Hunter Page-Lochard, Lily Sullivan, Kirin J Callinan, Priscilla Doueihy and Trevor Jamieson, who lived in a collaborative environment in Cape Tribulation for the duration of the shoot. Its cast overcome by a carnal energy, this exclusive excerpt captures a fragment of Lunacy’s allegorical narrative, their descent into madness translated into movement – choreographed by Shaun Parker with additional music by Michael Askill. Echoing humanity’s disconnect from the environment and ancient wisdom, the host, the looming eclipse and the ancient rainforest symbolize fractured ties to the spirit and the universe’s unspoken intelligence, as its characters transform under unknown forces.

Exploring the force with which humanity succumbs to its surroundings – be it, the built environment or the natural world – Lunacy marks a journey of self-discovery enlightened by the puzzling interconnectedness of its characters. Its premiere scheduled for the peak of the Geminid’s meteor shower on 14 December, Askill transplants the sense of disorientation felt among its characters to a multi-screen installation on Shark Island in Sydney Harbor, inviting visitors to give in to the unexplained pull of the untamed island landscape.