a feature film adaptation of visionary artist leonora carrington's remarkable memoir of madness and transformation.
a 1937, 19 year old leonora carrington - later to become one of the 20th century's great surrealist painters - fell in love with the renowned artist max ernst. together they fled to france, eventually creating a home in a farmhuse in provence.
but in 1940, the invading nazis arrested ernst and sent him to the camps. the toll onf these events caused carrington to unravel. after fleeing to spain on the advice of a friend, she ended up in madrid, where she was eventually sectioned by the spanish authorities and sent to a mental institution in the north.
there, carrington journeyed into a revelatory and acute madness that became the grounding for all her subsequent work.
'down below' is the story of her time in this asylum, of a rupture in a self that led to visionary states that birthed one of the most celebrated female artists of the 20th century.
