Awad Elkish

It seems to be an intermediate world of peace and quiet, the garden and country house where four people look back on testing lives. And forward, to the time they have left. On the one hand, there is regret – on the other, satisfaction. In a way, they are looking forward to the future – but at the same time, a longing for death regularly arises. And who is actually behind the camera? Are we watching actors or real people? Is there really any difference? Garten is full of contradictions – it is not until the credits roll that we realise who these people from very different backgrounds are.

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Following Bellavista and Totó, Peter Schreiner completes his informal trilogy of epic, black-and-white digital-video essay-films with the utterly monumental Fata Morgana. Shot in the Libyan desert and in an abandoned building in Lausitz, Germany, it features a man (Christian Schmidt), a woman (Giuliana Pachner, from Bellavista) - and, glimpsed now and again, a guide (Awad Elkish.) They talk, they fall silent. Winds blow. The sun shines. The camera runs. What gradually takes shape is nothing less than a painstakingly concentrated attempt to understand the human condition through the lens of cinema. A lofty ambition, and one that demands a considerable leap of faith on the part of the audience: this film is sedate, "difficult", challenging, often apparently impenetrable. But anyone who has seen Schreiner's previous films will be aware that he is by any standards a major artist, one that can be trusted to find places that other directors may not even suspect exist.

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