Directed by: Diana El Jeiroudi – Syria, Germany, France, Qatar, Italy – 2021 – 183 min
 

Synopsis:

Perhaps the most difficult position in a conflict – since it is secluded, dismal and inglorious -, is that of an exile in a foreign country where the echoes of the horrors taking place at home arrive muffled, devitalized, as if unreal. In "Republic of Silence,” a film made from footage recorded over the course of 12 years, the conflict in question is the interminable Syrian civil war that filmmaker Diana El Jeiroudi, now living in Europe as a refugee, experiences as a perpetual negotiation between an immediate reality and a distant nightmare, alienation and identification, the state of witness and that of participant. The simplicity of the images composing the segment featuring El Jeiroudi’s filmed diary – the camera is often static, placed next to a doorway or in the corner of a room, where the limits of the frame tend to point to what the camera doesn’t capture from the everyday life unfolding around it – are in stark contrast with the kaleidoscopic footage shot in Syria, where each frame trembles under the threat of imminent violence.