I saw this film as part of the Sofia Middle East and North Africa Regional Film Festival. It seems to have been completely overlooked, while it impressed me the most. It has the poignancy of a Mike Leigh film, of which the minimalist musical score is also reminiscent. Equally, it concentrates on the internal life of the characters, using close-ups, slow motion and still frames, as if making a souvenir of each precious moment before being displaced. It is obviously an intimate and personal thing for the director.
The stillness somehow magically translates to timelessness: despite the slowness, the film flows and flies, not least due to the artistic subtlety with which the central character, the grandfather, is portrayed. He is almost a mythological figure, a bond between the worlds of the dead and the living, the eternal and the departed. The past and family are never gone - they permeate and radiate through this inadvertent artist, facing destiny with unwavering stoicism, barely allowing for a smile or tear. His young family, rather than leaving to go abroad, return the grandfather to the native village and his beloved. There's such tenderness and simple poignancy to the story, the family communicating almost silently. Everything is symbolic, from bees' nests to the castle-like home and the barren earth on which the son is lying, to all the details in the domestic life of the family, and the agony of digging up a grave when faced with exile.
