Oblivion—a 70-minute, one-act opera film written and scored by composer-librettist John Aylward—has won Best Musical Film at the Cannes World Film Festival – Remember the Future, an independent Cannes-based competition that runs monthly selections and annual awards. Coverage from multiple music outlets confirms the category win and the project’s growing festival profile.
While not affiliated with the main Cannes Film Festival, Remember the Future functions as a hybrid program highlighting international works across fiction, documentary and music-driven categories; it operates on a monthly/annual model and is listed as an IMDb-qualifying event. For a music-led narrative like Oblivion, the format can accelerate discovery beyond traditional opera circuits.
Conceived from Dante’s Purgatorio, Aylward’s film stages two Wanderers and a bound, possibly royal figure inside a liminal “after” where memory is currency and testimony is suspect. The sonic landscape narrows the aperture to four voices and a lean ensemble—viola, cello, contrabass, electric guitar and electronics—producing a grainy palette of parlando exchanges, textural breakdowns, and ostinati that flicker against low-string sul ponticello and guitar delay tails. The production values privilege clarity over sheer mass: close-mic detail, controlled reverb decay, and a mastering that preserves phrase-level dynamics rather than flattening the score’s attack and release. Label materials and the album booklet underline the work’s “beguiling and mysterious” character and its interweaving of spoken and sung text.
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The screen version emerged as a deliberate pivot from staging. Aylward partnered with producer Graham Swon (Ravenser Odd Productions) and director Laine Rettmer to shoot on the U.S. East Coast over an intensive 12-day schedule, then fused pre-recorded studio audio to picture in post—an approach that tightens sync without sacrificing breath and rubato that would vanish under purely location sound. On camera, Alice Millar’s cinematography frames the performance grammar—eye-lines and cuts ride the ends of musical phrases, keeping phrase-level syncopation intact. These production specifics are detailed in the project’s press materials.
Casting aligns with the commercial release on New Focus Recordings: Nina Guo (soprano), Lukas Papenfusscline (tenor), and baritones Tyler Boque and Cailin Marcel Manson, with Laura Williamson (viola), Issei Herr (cello), Greg Chudzik (contrabass), Daniel Lippel (electric guitar), John Aylward (electronics), and Stratis Minakakis (music director). Documentation from the label and booklet confirms personnel and recording credits.
As a recording, Oblivion benefits from editing, mixing and mastering that foreground transient detail—picked harmonics and bridge noise on electric guitar, rosiny bow-starts in low strings—and a dynamic range that lets whispered recitative crest into ensemble crescendi without clipping. The booklet specifies the sessions and post team, reinforcing the film’s carefully built sound design rather than a simple “captured performance.”
Credits & availability. Oblivion is produced by Ravenser Odd Productions, directed by Laine Rettmer with Alice Millar as director of photography. The commercial recording is released on New Focus Recordings (catalogue FCR370), with supporting digital distribution. Excerpts and additional context are accessible via the composer’s official site and label page.
