Seif gheir aadi

Als poetisches Alltagsballett entfaltet sich diese Chronik eines Sommers. Nachdem sein Auto beschädigt wurde, installierte der Vater des Filmemachers eine auf den Parkplatz gerichtete Überwachungskamera. Sie liefert die Bilder, in denen es weniger um das Stellen des Missetäters geht als um das Porträt eines arabischen Viertels im israelischen Ramla. Das Leben müsse unterbrochen werden, um sich zu zeigen, heißt es in einem Zwischentitel, und zunehmend öffnet sich der Film für gemeinhin Unbemerktes wie in der niedrigen Bildauflösung rauschenden Regen, herumwehende Gegenstände oder geheimnisvolle Frauen, die in den Pixeln verschwinden. (Patrick Holzapfel)

It's the summer of 2006. The war between Israel and Lebanon is raging. In the Arab neighborhood of Ramla known as the Ghetto, a mysterious silhouette attacks a car with a stone. The owner of the car happens to be part of Kamal Aljafari's family and installs a CCTV camera to gather evidence of the crime. Years pass and the images captured by the surveillance camera are found and eventually become this film: an unusual summer indeed.
Half way between a thriller and an intimate diary, AN UNUSUAL SUMMER offers us a concise fresco of an entire population. The street corner upon which the camera is trained suddenly becomes the center of a universe, where passersby appear and disappear and seem to exist only at the moment they cross the frame. Thanks to its elegant work of editing and reframing, the characters move around a few key elements like ghosts, a car, a tree, a house: a choreography of souls, each with a story and each living under the constant threat of war. Aljafari's text is our guide through the film and leads us into a world where the traces of war and occupation are invisible, yet still very present in people's lives. In the background of all this perpetual movement, there stands a fig tree, a monument to the strength of the Palestinian population. (Rebecca Depas)

Kamal Aljafari: VISIT IRAQ (2003, K), THE ROOF (2006), PORT OF MEMORY (2010), RECOLLECTION (2015) IT’S A LONG WAY FROM AMPHIOXUS (2019)