ONE SEA, 10 SEAS / SEVEN YEARS IN MAY

Images, sounds, words: three essential elements of cinematic language from which Nour Ouayda creates a three-voice narrative about the multi-year recording of a seaside landscape in Beirut. N., C., and T. are the invisible, mysterious protagonists in this voyage into the heart of recorded memories, reflecting their differing relationships with the world and cinema. For N., the DV aesthetic makes it possible to capture aesthetic flourishes and, like a painter, note subtle changes in a calm or rough sea. For T., the challenge is to compile every sound in the world. But are the sounds she records in her apartment not more faithful to the spirit of the sea? A brilliant poetic essay.

Made before Jair Bolsonaro rose to power, Seven Years in May is a sadly prophetic political fable; it is a poetic hybrid work whose highlight the words of Brazil’s underclass. Director Affonso Uchôa films his co-writer, Rafael dos Santos Rocha, as he recounts the traumatic event that changed his life seven years earlier: the police abducted and brutalized him with impunity, forcing him to flee far from home. Sitting by a fire and sharing his experience with a stranger who was also a victim of violence, his story becomes that of an entire nation crushed by misery and police corruption, while finding the strength to resist in the spoken word.