Cold Souls

KultKino Atelier. Dir. Sophie Barthes. Paul Giamatti is an anxious New Yorker who finds an answer to his troubled malaise after coming across an article about a tech company that claims to have found a solution to human suffering. This is a metaphysical tragicomedy, straddling the line between the real and the fantastic.

Its set in a future world where souls are extracted from humans and traded as commodities. By deep-freezing souls, the company, can give their customers a life free from fear, doubt, and worry. Giamatti eagerly enlists their services ready to free himself from emotional burden. It all goes wrong when Giamatti's soul is stolen by a ‘soul-trafficking mule’ who ends up giving it to a talentless Russian actress. To get back the soul that is his, he must make a trip to St. Petersburg, along the way discovering the true key to happiness isn't the absence of pain, but being able to experience a full spectrum of emotion and cherish things that really matter.