Cinemust

"The film also repeatedly frames its characters through doorways, allowing us to observe them from one room into another. The effect recalls the spatial compositions of Yasujiro Ozu, where architecture is not merely background but part of the emotional grammar of a scene. Doors, corridors and thresholds become quiet visual reminders of the distance between people who inhabit the same spaces but remain unable to reach one another."

"Це стан між двома світами. З одного боку, ти не можеш поховати людину й пройти той шлях горя, який зазвичай допомагає пережити втрату. З іншого боку, ти вже не можеш жити своїм попереднім життям, тому що воно назавжди змінилося."

"Well, Sorokin knows and understands that very well, and he writes about it. I also had my own experience. I lived in Russia for 10 years and I read a great deal of Russian literature. Perhaps not as extensively as Sorokin, but enough to understand this mentality and recognise these types of characters. What I found interesting was that the actor himself exclaimed: “I understand this character very well because I am like him!”."

"Yet the central tension of the documentary lies in the impending loss of the family’s home. Their tent, more than just a dwelling, represents a cultural and existential anchor. As urban development encroaches – concrete buildings rising where open land once stretched – the family faces the prospect of relocation. This transition is not framed as progress but as a quiet form of erasure. The Bedouin way of life, rooted in movement, livestock, and a deep connection to land, appears fundamentally incompatible with the rigid structures being imposed upon it."

"The second is Dziga Vertov. I often return to Man with a Movie Camera [1929] for its powerful use of editing. His ideas about cinema revealing realities beyond everyday human perception really resonate with me – the idea that the camera can uncover something magical when used with intention."

"I am also very drawn to contemporary North American independent horror. I admire filmmakers like Graham Swon, whose film The World Is Full of Secrets [2018] I love. Skinamarink [Kyle Edward Ball, 2022] was another important reference, as well as We Are Going to the World’s Fair [Jane Schoenbrun, 2022]. I feel a strong affinity with these filmmakers. There is also Tyler Taormina, whose work I admire greatly. They create small, low-budget films with a strong atmosphere and a sense of mystery, often engaging with horror in subtle ways."

"What distinguishes Saab’s gaze, and Yaqubi’s editing foregrounds, is its persistent attention to women. The footage lingers on the paramilitary training of Palestinian women fighters, hands over the frame to young women in Cairo, and – in one of the film’s most quietly devastating gestures – returns to Saab herself standing in front of her family’s bombed house in Beirut, a building with 150 years of history reduced to rubble in an instant of the Lebanese Civil War"