FRUITS OF DESPAIR

A word from the selection commitee : 

From the outset, in Fruits of Despair, Nima Nassaj makes the unsettling observation that unfortunately foreshadows what the audience may feel: how can one shake off this nagging sense of dejà vu when confronted with footage of the catastrophe that has been unfolding in Palestine for decades? 

Then follows a demonstration of dazzling clarity that doubles down as a great lesson on the resilience of cinema in the face of reality. 

Here, a filmmaker deploys all the cinematic tools to draw meaning from images that seem to endlessly replay the suffering of the Palestinian people; drawing from archive, social media feeds, and the work of other filmmakers such as Sepideh Farsi, he brings to light the systematic nature of the genocidal violence perpetrated by the state of Israel. While a young man is forced to flee his home after Tehran is bombed by the Israeli army; the thin membrane of film is all he has to help him contend with reality, as he turns his everyday life into a video diary. 

The great beauty of Fruits of Despair lies in the fact it is one of those films that, like living organisms, reorganise their substance and transform through the events they experience: the young man and the filmmaker become one, just as the diary and the essay intertwine, as if to illuminate a reality that cannot be faced alone. 

Victor Bournerias