Synopsis
The voices of Jamal’s North African friends, imprisoned in detention centres, come from the mountains around metropolitan Athens. He, confined to a small room on the eighth floor of a half-abandoned building, searches for the words that will resolve the labyrinth of life and existence.
A word from Tënk
Jamal is condemned to waiting, isolated in the heart of an Athens under heavy, low-hanging skies, far from the postcard images. A contemporary figure of Sisyphus, he seems trapped in an endless loop, always brought back to the same walls. “I stayed in the wall,” he murmurs, with a fragile smile. He fled Algeria, where the future seemed a dead end, caught between frustration and dependency. His fluent Greek hints at the years he has spent here. Yet he remains outside of society, away from prying eyes. He waits — for papers, a status, a future. In a restrained mise-en-scène, Nina Alexandraki and Eleftherios Panagiotou choose to stay by his side, capturing his solitude but also the gestures that structure his daily life: checking on friends, cleaning, reorganizing his space, writing, shouting… singing… Repeated gestures that gradually become acts of resistance. For within this endless repetition lies the strength of a man who refuses to disappear.
Pauline David
Programmer, director of Festival En Ville ! (Bruxelles)
