Republic Of Silence

Twelve years in the making, Republic of Silence bears witness to tragedy on an epic scale, accompanied by an ever-expanding mosaic of fragile, deeply embedded moments from the filmmaker’s life, beginning with the memory at a young age when her father gives her a camera, right up to the present day.

Synopsis

It begins with the camera received aged seven. Or is it when life collapses in Damascus, splintered by dictatorship, war and international political corruption? Republic of Silence is a fresco that encompasses more than a decade, interweaving the daily life of a humdrum existence in Berlin – lulled by solidarity and love – with memories of a lost time; that of life in Syria, of an existence turned upside down by conflicts and far too often overwhelmed by fear (“Evil makes a very loud and terrifying sound”), of struggle and of resistance. Diana El Jeiroudi whittles the film in the style of memories, through snippets, sounds, textures – that of skin, of bodies inhabited by the past and by the weight of trauma. Sometimes she seems to whisper, or perhaps even remain silent, as she had to as a child, to avoid revealing an Iraqi accent.