2024 | France | Short

Sof Ma'arav (End Of The West)

  • Arabic, French, Hebrew English, French 16 mins
  • Director | Yotam Ben-David
  • Writer | Yotam Ben-David
  • Producer | Yotam Ben-David

STATUS: Released

This film is currently not available.   

Yotam Ben-David was born and raised in Israel. He left his native country and now lives in Paris, in exile. He stages himself, a solitary male figure in his apartment, windows open on the city and its noise. Evening falls. Voices begin to come from somewhere else that is not outside. The printer, which was moving by itself on a stool, suddenly turns off. A power outage redoubles the darkness of the evening. The night that then opens is not only the opposite of day, but the site and the material of an inner experience, a metaphysical journey that leads the solitary inhabitant to the confines of himself. He chats on Skype with his grandfather, but when the computer turns off in turn there is only the reflection of his face on the black screen, between two candles. Daydream? Because his grandfather is dead. Talking to the dead is to bring back childhood memories to the country, but also to deplore what the rulers have done to the native country. End : the extremity and the end. The far west is Israel, a land first dreamed of, then projected by the West beyond itself. The grandfather is the incarnation of this old dream that has become a lost world, his death marks the end of a story that began on the rooftops of Babylon. But the end of the far west is also, necessarily, that of the West itself: a story of technology and conquests, colonial or spatial. The filmmaker's bedroom meditation is of this magnitude: metaphysical, historical, geopolitical. No history lesson, however: rather a painful and uncertain work of mourning. In the early morning, the birds sing, but points of light trace a vertical line in the Parisian sky, like rocket fire from the other end of the west. The dawn is deceptive: it is twilight.

Drama Autobiographical Story Twilight Country Paris Darkness Journey Dead Dream Incarnation Technology Meditation Magnitude Painful Mourning
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