Tangled Worlds – The Natural and Fantastic in Peter Strickland’s Katalin Varga and Berberian Sound Studio

[Extract] In his compiled collection of Super 8 home movies, Peter Strickland describes a youth in which he felt “torn between natural history and film” – alternating weekends between the natural wonders of Thursley Heath and the curious offerings at London’s Scala cinema. This tension continues to resonate through Strickland’s features, evinced in the interplay between the raw materiality of nature, and the ephemeral and fantastic possibilities of fiction.