What happens when you die is a question almost every human has asked, and the Finnish short film “Bright White Light,” now playing at Indianapolis’ Indy Shorts film festival, may have some reassuring answers.
Directors Henna Välkky and Eesu Lehtola sought out stories of people who have surived near-death experiences, then animated them in black and white for a film that — despite its foreboding subject — turns out to be at times hypnotic, and far more comforting than scary. They noticed a pattern of people feeling welcome on the other side, despite ultimately choosing to stay alive. Many went back to daily life with far less anxiety about death.
The film, which debuted at Tribeca, plays as part of Indy Short’s The Unexpected block on Saturday, though you can also watch online. Indy Shorts, celebrating its seventh year, is one of our Coolest Film Festivals and 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee. It runs through Sunday.
We talked with Välkky and Lehtola via email, and they answered our questions together. We asked about tracking down people’s near death accounts, animating in black and white, and if they’ve observed any universal human experiences of the afterlife.
MovieMaker: Where did you source all of the stories/accounts you illustrate in the film?
We started spreading the word that we are making this documentary on social media and told about it to all people we met and we actually found a few people (relatives, friend of a friend, etc) just like that. We also searched the internet for forums and discussion groups where people had shared their experiences. We then reached out to some of those people if they would like to be part of our project and tell about their experiences and luckily some of them agreed to share their stories. All the stories in the film are the actual audio recordings from the interviews we had with the people that had experienced near death experiences.
It took a really long time to find enough people who were willing to discuss the experiences with us, since it is quite a delicate subject and unfortunately has a certain stigma to it. Some of the people we interviewed hoped to stay anonymous in the film since they had negative experiences from their family members and other people after they had shared their near-death experience to them so we of course honored that and gave anonymity to all these people.
Overall we got a dozen near-death experience stories and narrowed them down to six for the final documentary. Even though every story we received was truly unique and interesting we wanted to have as much versatility as possible. We wanted to give voice to different genders, religions, non-religious people, cultural backgrounds, young and old so that the audience would get as versatile a view on the subject as possible.
We worked on the narrative edit for almost two years before we locked it and moved forward to animation which took another two years to make.
MovieMaker: What was the origin, or initial spark, for this film, and how did it evolve from that?
Välkky and Lehtola: We have always been curious about phenomena that can’t be explained. Phenomena that are mystified, studied but not yet fully understood.
When we started working on our first project together we had three ideas for a film — recurring dreams and nightmares, near-death experiences, and paranormal experiences. We thought about subjects that interested us and also could be told in a visually unique and special way mixing experimental storytelling and experimental visualisations. We first made a film about recurring dreams, called “We Are in a Dream” in 2018, and developed our narrating and visual style for that project. Since we liked how it turned out, we continued with the next idea, which was near-death experiences.
Near-death experiences leave us with the question: “Is there something on the other side?” This phenomena (with all its characteristics: light at the end of the tunnel, out of body experiences, etc) is widely recognized but is often met with reservation or even condemnation. This is what makes the subject intriguing for us: an irrational, visual, and personal experience that has a life-changing effect but is difficult for people to openly disclose.
This is also one of the reasons why we think this kind of experimental animation works with the documentary content: It offers people the opportunity to open up about their experiences anonymously.
MovieMaker: Why did you decide to do this in black and white?
Välkky and Lehtola: Though the film is black and white, we looked at it more as lightness and darkness, where the light is energy that flows in us and in the universe and the black is the space we exist in.
After a lot of concept design, we came up with the idea of what the world would look like if we had an imaginary camera that could capture some visual information from behind the border of life and death. Just glimpses of the other side so that it captures only the presence, the energy that flows in us and in the surrounding universe we live in.
Kind of in the same way as in the old handheld video cameras you had the night vision mode that let you film in dark, but the image was really grainy and blurry and it barely captured the subjects in the dark. That’s the inspiration behind the aesthetics of our film.
We aimed to make the film feel like a near-death experience, so that it would be more than just a film about near-death experiences but rather a voyage that takes the viewer through all the stages from this life to “the other end of the tunnel” and back to this life.
Even though there are a number of scientific explanations/speculations about what the experience is, for many it is still a life changing experience that can change their view on life and death altogether. It was also important for us to include some thoughts people had on that as well.
What Happens When You Die, According to Participants in ‘Bright White Light’
MovieMaker: Did you reach any conclusions about death from making the film? Did any of the experiences seem so universal that you think they must be true for everyone?
Välkky and Lehtola: Each experience has its own characteristics in addition to general ones, and generally, there is no specific formula. However, many of these experiences share similar features regardless of age, culture, how these people nearly died, and whether they are religious or not.
It turned out that many recurring themes repeated even in the 10 stories we managed to gather: seeing the light, going through the tunnel, and crossing a border gave people a sense of no return, and how painful it is to return to the body. We can’t say if this is true for everyone (since we’ve read there are also experiences that are not this positive, although they are more rare), but at least for the people in the film, it was quite spectacular how similar their experiences were, and we were quite astonished by that.
This also showed us that even if the experience itself has similar characteristics, humans create meaning based on their beliefs and culture — and how near-death experiences can challenge their deeply held beliefs about existence.
It was comforting to hear that even though the way people nearly died was sad and terrible, the actual experience after that was comforting, warm — the pain and sorrow went away. As for what is true, we don’t want or even can say anything, but making the documentary made it easier for us to process death and dying since it is as natural part of life as being born.
MovieMaker: One of the concepts that emerges is that when you die, you can see and understand anything, or travel through time to witness different events. Does that have particular appeal to you as filmmakers/storytellers?
Välkky and Lehtola: Of course. It gives the freedom to create something really abstract and unique visually, with sound and narratively. It can also be a bit of a burden since there is no real life reference material but on the other hand, it gives freedom as well. We have to rely on the stories told and then try to come up with a visualization.
We try to avoid visualizing the stories in a direct way and always try to go for an abstract and interesting solution that when combined with the narration it grows into something new, special and unexpected but still tells the story we want to tell.
In the projects we make together we always try to think of subjects that suit our expertise best. With Henna being a director and screenwriter and Eesu being a creative artist, we always think what kind of stories would benefit from those standpoints.
We try to figure out what stories would be best told in animation and would be hard if not impossible to visualise another way. And as we both draw inspiration from dreams, subconscious, unexplainable phenomena and surrealism, we love to experiment and try to create stories and films that we would like to see and experience.
We always aim to surprise ourselves with the final outcome and hope that it would surprise the audience as well.
You can learn more about “Bright White Light” at Paprika Films.
Main image: “Bright White Light.” Paprika Films