Chronicles from the Siege

What does it really mean to exist in a state of siege? Abdallah Alkhatib’s debut, which became a political flashpoint in Germany after it was named Best First Feature at the Berlinale, shows a city turned into a shell, and the survival of citizens whose minds are as under assault as their homes.  
 
The city (shot in Algeria) is not named, but it is drawn from Alkhatib’s own experience during the starvation siege of Yarmouk in Damascus, and Gaza’s ongoing prison echoes through it. Caustic humour — a coping mechanism and a courageous defiance — frequently cuts its way through this low-lit, bombed-out ghostland, and the fragmented vignettes that remain.  
 
Cinefiles holed up in a video store debate whether to burn cherished movies for warmth; a smoker tries to trade a refrigerator for a cigarette puff; a couple sneaking private time suffer farcical interruptions. As someone has scrawled on a door: “I don’t see my life outside the confines of the siege. And I don’t see an end to the siege outside of the confines of my life."

- Carmen Gray