Araf
2018 | 43 minutes | Turkey / Greece / Bosnia & Herzegovina
Director Didem
Pekün
Screenplay Didem Pekün
Director of Photography Petros Nousias, gsc
Editor Didem Pekün
Cast Dino Bajric
Music Ellen Arkbro, Elena kakaliagou & Ingrid Schmoliner
Sound Theofilos Botonakis, Fatih Ragbet & Eli Haligua
Producer Didem Pekün & locus athens (Maria-Thalia Carras & Olga Hatzidaki)
Screenplay Didem Pekün
Director of Photography Petros Nousias, gsc
Editor Didem Pekün
Cast Dino Bajric
Music Ellen Arkbro, Elena kakaliagou & Ingrid Schmoliner
Sound Theofilos Botonakis, Fatih Ragbet & Eli Haligua
Producer Didem Pekün & locus athens (Maria-Thalia Carras & Olga Hatzidaki)
Araf is an essayistic road movie and diary of a ghostly character, Nayia,
who travels between Srebrenica and Sarajevo to Mostar in Bosnia. She has been
in exile since the war and returns for the 22nd memorial of the
Srebrenica genocide. The film is guided by her diary notes of the journey which
merge with the myth of Daedalus and Icarus – Icarus being the name given to the
winner of a bridge diving competition in her home country. The story of Icarus
and Daedalus, a myth symbolic of man’s over-ambition and inevitable failure, is
weaved throughout the film as a way to think about exorcizing the vicious cycle
of such events happening in the future and of a possible reconciliation. Nayia
also thinks of Icarus from a different perspective, that of seeing the optimism
of such a leap, his braveness of taking a leap into the unknown in this era of
radical instability, that perhaps, Icarus wanted to write a different
narrative. Araf thus traces these
paradoxes through Nayia’s displacement and her return to her home country
post-war – that of a constant terror and a permanent standstill, and the
friction between displacement and permanence.


