detours while speaking of monsters
Germany / Turkey
18'
- Synopsis
- Curatorial presentation
A 4000-year-old aquatic monster now lives through the tales of the few. Its myth dates back to the ancestors of Armenians and Kurds around Lake Van, a region that witnessed the ethnic cleansing of both peoples. On the crossroads of mythological, political and personal realms, different forms of erasure are concealed. Old gods are upset with us, and I am upset with my father.
Shot with a particular attention to the materialism of space, detours while speaking of monsters unfolds as a topographic dialog about the myths of heroes in search of antagonists; about the massacres whose histories are retained by the earth and the water; but also about the present, with its ambiguities, amnesias and contradictions. Deniz Șimșek lays out a series of pure landscapes in which greenery, clear water, lightning, or the frozen snow and the mountains reign supreme. These landscapes become the canvas over which, allowing the harshness of the wind to sing its song, a story is told — the story of a massacre, of a trauma that has always been concealed, but which can never be erased, which is both a triumph (because it has not been forgotten) and a curse (because it will remain there forever). (Emil Vasilache)
