Adrien, a young film student, embarks on a journey to central France with the intention of making a film work in progress, without a script or actors. He is determined to make a masterpiece, a film that will leave a mark. On his journey he finds himself in Torino (Museo Nazionale del Cinema, in the Mole Antonelliana), Garessio (Cuneo), Copenaghen, Courtempierre, Courtempierre, the town where, in 1932, the great Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer made his most personal film, “Vampyr.” Here, Adrien's mind and life are mixed with Dreyer's. The boy finds his quest for a perfect artistic essence appended to that of the Danish master and must confront the results he achieved. Do these leave any hope alive, or do they show that the quest is and always has been only illusory? Animation, fiction, staging, interviews, archive materials will mix in a documentary work that seeks penetrate the profound Dreyer psychological imagination.
Dreyer, like few directors in the history of cinema, perhaps like no other, was constantly engaged in a spasmodic, meticulous and desperate search: the search for an essence. Be it the human essence, the essence of life or the essence of cinema itself. This film deals specifically with the identity of that essence, asking a series of questions: what drives an author to think, write and direct a film, a narrative work? Where does the artistic impulse come from and what does it relate to? Is it just a form of communication to generate moral alignment or is it something more? Is there an individual and social narcissism? Is there a desire to show greater depth of thought? What made Dreyer want so badly to make a definitive film, the one about Jesus, fighting so hard against compromise that he never succeeded in making it?