2007

DIARY OF SOMEONE WAITING shows the usual non-heroic life of young soldiers guarding the border, preparing for a war that is not coming, waiting to catch immigrants that never appear, bouncing around in the snow like twelve-year boys at camp. With absurd beckettian humor, any sense of authority disappears as the soldiers film one-another. The movie is a generic description of what life itself becomes at one point: a long wait for something to happen. With a keen eye sketching sharp observations, the film explores the soldiers’ true selves, in time of peace, when they have to make up their own minds on who and how to be. (Bianca Bănică, BIEFF)

Screened in 2013 at Oberhausen, what at first seems to be the start of a SF movie (a ceiling filmed in a fixed shot, with a voice talking about a strange movement witnessed earlier) turns into a handy-cam video about the contrast between the normality of a hotel room and the abnormality of the society surrounding it. Beginning in Bethlehem and ending on the other side of the Separation Wall, DIRTY PICTURES builds a sample of meta-cinema reminiscent of Chris Marker, which relates the director’s own experience of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, brilliantly managing to trim down the monstrosity of history to human proportions. (Bianca Bănică, BIEFF)

From the heart of the Civil War from Lebanon, JULY TRIP brings us violent images of street fights, demolished buildings, people trying to escape from the wrecks left behind  spontaneous explosions. Showing the fear and desperation of people trapped in the middle of the chaos, the film movie raises awareness about a conflict that made nothing but destruction. Mixing complete silence with the extra-diegetic sounds that mimes the intensity of bombs through music, the director forces out contradictory attitudes from the viewer who is left to build and then analyze the frontal image of victims, whether they are dead or alive. (Bianca Bănică, BIEFF)