Aloft

Aloft is a 2014 internationally co-produced drama film written and directed by Claudia Llosa and starring Jennifer Connelly, Cillian Murphy, and Mélanie Laurent. The film premiered in competition at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival. Plot Nana Kunning, a struggling mother of two young sons, takes her children to an isolated location. She, along with other parents and children, have come there in order to be seen by the Architect, a faith healer who builds small delicate structures out of branches and then brings patients inside them. The Architect works by lottery and Nana's son Gully, who has an inoperable brain tumour, is not chosen to be saved. Before the Architect can touch the winning patient, a blind boy, the falcon of Ivan (Nana's other son) destroys the structure. The furious crowd refuses to give Nana and her sons a ride unless they abandon the bird. When Ivan releases the falcon, one of the men shoots it dead. The Architect arrives at Nana's job at a hog farm, informing her that she healed the blind boy she touched, stating that he never touched the boy's eyes, while she did. Nana ignores him, but is later surprised when the man who shot the falcon comes to her, pleading that she save his child. The Architect trains Nana in creating the structures needed to heal people. To fix the legs of a little girl, Nana builds a swing. Her sons wait in the vehicle while she heals the girl, but Ivan grows bored and goes into the woods, where he sees his mother on the swing with the girl. Not understanding what he had witnessed, Ivan takes the vehicle and attempts to drive Gully home. He instead crashes the car onto an ice-covered lake. Ivan survives, but Gully drowns under the ice. Nana is crushed by Gully's death, abandoning 10-year-old Ivan to concentrate on her faith healing.