From ‘Orwell 2+2=5’ to ‘Frankenstein’: TIFF’s Films on Power, Creation, and Survival Are a Warning
In other words, the film obliges us – leads, uncomfortably – to face what we would prefer to deny: that a writer, with shares, could imagine a future that now resembles our present. Our self -portrait is sewn not only of the sneaky warnings of Orwell on the power, but of the nightmare that we always insist is only fiction.
“They flood you with information, lies, action, stop people in the streets, scare you,” adds Peck. “They terrorize, and you know, it works. It’s an incredible assault.”
Put your soul on your hand and walk
Or Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 warns us of apathy towards authoritarianism, Put your soul on your hand and walk Obliges us to face the daily realities of life under military control, in particular in Gaza.
At the beginning of 2024, the director of Iranian origin, Sepideh Farsi, arrived in Cairo, of the notebooks of intention in hand, only to find the doors of Gaza closed to her. A Palestinian refugee suggests that he call Fatma Hassouna, a 24 -year -old photographer in Gaza. Thanks to her camera and her voice, Farsi discovered the only window she could open.
“I have never had such a deep relationship with someone I have never met … this feeling of being blocked in a country you can’t leave,” Farsi told Wired. “Then it’s just the magic of the meeting, of human alchemy, and his smile was contagious.”
Put your soul plays as more than a recording of someone’s life during a brutal military seat; The war and the persistence of a single life are one and the same thing. He claims this genocide, and everything that allows him always seeks one thing: erasure. But Hassouna’s smile, making his way entirely through video calls and fractured connections in 112 minutes, makes this goal impossible.
The opening plans of Hassouna and Farsi appearing anchor the film in this perspective, which feels not only personal but very social. There are dream talks, to travel to fashion shows, its end of the war hopes, while the Farsi interrupts and sometimes makes Huches in Hassouna on the wanderings of its own household cat.
Through the film, Hassouna comes to life not only as a photographer, but as a witness to life that fits into being. She sings, writes and supervises the world in small lightning lightnings of beauty – describes, gestures, moments that sparkle and hold. The weight of Israel pushes, but in his eyes, and in his goal, you feel resilience not as heroism, but as relentless survival.
Their conversations flash in and out – Bad connections, cuts, pixelic resolutions. Farsi kissed the problems as part of the life of the film, allowing the public to feel his frustration and the strangeness of connecting with Gaza. “By keeping these breaks and these disconnections, I transmit something very strange in the way we connect to Gaza, because Gaza is not accessible, and yet it is like another planet.”
Make the film for Farsi was a lot like living in two worlds at the same time: recording Hassouna from afar, of course, but also being closely present as ani, witness and human being. “We were both filming and filming, in a way,” she reflects. “I had to remain natural, but also somehow controlled as a filmmaker. Because, of course, I had to be able to react in the right way for her. ”
