TIFF Lightbox, Cinema 2
Familiar Phantoms
Screening with: Diary of A Sky
Duration: 42 min Director: Søren Lind & Larissa Sansour Genre: Experimental Documentary Year: 2023
Languages: English
Description:
Familiar Phantoms is inspired by anecdotes from Sansour’s own family history and her old childhood in Bethlehem, making it her most personal film to date. Combining scenes filmed in a derelict mansion, Super 8 footage and private photos, the editing mimics the workings of memory, constantly revisiting the same imagery alongside new fragments in search of meaning. Throughout the film, the mansion serves as the seat of memory. In the rooms, vignettes are played out, adding a theatrical dimension, enlarging and exaggerating the narrative components, just as memory perpetually reworks, reinforces, adds and subtracts. While most scenes are acted out by actors, other scenes turn objects and mementos into sculptural installations, a dark space decorated with dozens of suspended love bird cages, a group of taxidermy seagulls sitting on the floor or a free-standing sink full to the brim of lemons.
Awards: BPFF
More Info: Larissa Sansour – Familiar Phantoms
Co-presented by:
Writers Against the War on Gaza
Eglinton-Lawrence & Don Valley for Palestine
