BLOCK 5. Trapped in History

In 1960, in the heart of the Sahara Desert, France detonated its first atomic bomb in Reggane (Algeria), forever altering the land and its people. To this day, populations and the environment continue to suffer the consequences in total silence.

A photograph, a quiet legacy of power, and the ideological battles that echo through generations. In searching through fragments of the past, I catch glimpses of what we choose not to see, what slips through the cracks of our awareness. How do we inherit what we cannot grasp, forcing us to repeat the same gestures over and over again?

Through a collage of personal archive footage and photographs, the history emerges of a small, metaphorical city where all the streets are named after poets. The town's psychogeography defines the mental and emotional state of its inhabitants, who live in a utopian illusion founded on poetry. When the system changes, and war begins, new neighborhoods emerge to accommodate the refugees, and the existing street names are replaced by new ones. Abrupt and sweeping upheavals lead to confusion among the city's residents, who soon find themselves lost amid the memories of the forgotten poets.

A modern correspondence unfolds between Mon Dewulf in Brussels and his partner Karim in war-torn Beirut. Dewulf uses videos, voice memos, and text messages to craft an intimate portrait of their relationship.

The weight of history becomes light in the hands of children. A group of kids become an interviewing team in a Budapest park, a graveyard of enormous old communist statues. Their questions and observations awaken forgotten echoes, and through playful and clever editing, the film captures in this limited space the magnitude of the country’s past and present.