Extra Life (and Decay)

A film by Stéphanie Lagarde

2025 | 21 mins | Digital Video | Color | 25fps

A polyphonic narrator, filmmaker, parent, forest, insects, fungi, childcare worker, declare their absolute refusal of labor exploitation, and their necessity to join collective bodies in resistance.

Who ordered legibility? In an incantation to conjure authority, the film unfolds the connections between the inventions of nuclear families and managed forest plots as controllable normalized units. Extra Life (and Decay) celebrates hospitality as a survival tool to fight morbid politics of isolation. An ode to the multitude, the illegible, the unmeasurable.

Awards

2026 Grand Prix du jury étudiant - Festival de Films de Nancy, Nancy (FR)

Screenings

2025    Forum Expanded - Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Berlinale), Berlin (DE)
2025    Vanguardia y Género - BAFICI.26, Buenos Aires (AR)
2025    Main program & exhibition - Videonale.20, Bonn (DE)
2025    Niche Appeal - Onion City Experimental Film Festival, Chicago (US)
2025    The House Is A Hole - Winnipeg Underground Film Festival, Winnipeg (CA)
2025    Experimental Shorts - Edinburgh International Film Festival, Edinburgh (UK)
2025    EX-NOW 4 - EXiS - 22nd Experimental Film & Video Festival, Seoul (KR)
2025    Tectonics: Experimental Shorts - Climate Film Festival, New York City (US)
2025    Um, Womanhood - Vancouver International Film Festival, Vancouver (CA)
2025    Official Selection - ULTRACinema, Mexico City (MX)
2026    Efusing (Reproductive) Labour: Ecological Solidarities - Images Festival, Toronto (CA)
2026    Climate Film Festival Pop-up - Jeu de Paume, Paris (FR)
2026    Berlin Atonal, Berlin (DE)
2026    Sélection Labo - Festival de Films de Nancy, Nancy (FR)
2026    CUNY TV, New York City (US)
2026    From The Breach - Te Uru Contemporary Gallery, Auckland (NZ)
2026    Field Recordings, Rotterdam (NL)

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