Albert Serra’s Birdsong is one of his most visually striking films shot in luminous black and white it is an elemental epic that deftly blends its rustic authenticity with humour in the retelling of the biblical Legend of the Three Kings. The film balances the classical and the profane as Serra focuses on the paradoxical moments before the birth of Christianity, a time when the Three Wise Men are just three men looking for something to follow. Drawing on the legacy of filmmakers such as Dryer, Passolini and Buñuel. Serra films in masterful long takes in the remarkable other worldly landscapes of the Canary Islands and Iceland, balancing their majesty with the bodies and material humour of the wandering kings.
