Memories of the Wind

In 1943 Aram, an Armenian painter and translator fleeing Istanbul, heads to the eastern Black Sea to cross into the Soviet Union. While he waits in a forest village on the border, winter closes in and the crossing shuts. The wait stretches into months. The film is not interested in escape. It is interested in the waiting itself: Aram hides in a house, walks in the forest, remembers pieces of his childhood and is stranded between where he wants to go and where he came from. It builds no chase; it shows how time fails to pass. The form is slow and centred on landscape: long takes, fog, snow and very little dialogue. The sound design makes the wind almost a character. Özcan Alper directed and wrote with Ahmet Büke. The interest we know from Autumn and Future Lasts Forever continues here: the mark political history leaves on the provinces. It was produced between Turkey, Germany, France and Georgia. Onur Saylak plays Aram and Sofia Khandamirova the woman in the village; Mustafa Uğurlu is also in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like slow cinema, the Black Sea landscape and stories of historical exile. Who it is not for: anyone wanting events. The film is close to eventless and never states the character's past outright.