The Heavy Burden

The concept of a frontier that the ideology of the nation-state has fetishized for centuries is at the root of the wars that have destroyed our world; and the migratory movements engendered by these wars. Especially in regions divided by religious, ethnic and political differences such as the Middle East, this notion of boundary is further complicated by the attribution of a symbolic value.

Almost sacred, this idea of a border imposes a national imaginary called national identity, according to which we define the "we" and "the other" through a sense of belonging monist. In this short film whose story takes place in Mardin, which has a 120 km border with Syria, I tried to ironically express what a Kurdish family torn between Turkey and Syria faces after the last war in Syria.

In this story, visible and invisible borders are mixed with war, migration and poverty. Certainly, this humble film cannot bring definitive answers to this notion of border, which are not only a political but also a philosophical problem. However, its purpose is to cast a human eye on this complex subject to show that, for war victims whose tragedies are masked by political debates, the line of demarcation between nation-states never designates a line of demarcation between Life and death.

But it is through the universal language of cinema that we can transmit the invisible tragedies of war.