Lost in a reverie, a man reels with sudden, piercing awareness of his own state of being. He ponders the world in which he lives—from the evolution of life and the atomic particles that constitute matter, to the mystery of memory and the enigma of death. Bounded by a walled enclosure, he is both unique and no different than anyone else who has searched in vain for the key to the great beyond. Through four tableaux that explore her character’s thoughts, filmmaker Michèle Lemieux takes a mischievous look at the profound reflections of this everyman, whose questions are part of humanity’s eternal quest for meaning.

An abstract yet compelling philosophical tale, Here and the Great Elsewhere turns the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen into a metaphor for the particles that make up the universe.