The idea of the form
It came in 2010. My DOP’s apartment has a direct view on the bay windows of a shopping mall. This cinematic view inspired me to develop a small story with a fixed camera, that only zooms and pans, at a distance - impartial, nonchalant. I imagined the cold meeting of a divorced couple in a commercial center, where they can hand over their child.
The idea of the content
The story developed a lot in 2013. I was almost exploded during the Boston Marathon 2013 as a participant of the runners. It stroke me how close I was to die, how the terror infiltrated in our everyday's life, and later how indifferent I become. I was caught in a profound feeling of nonsense. Then another terrible attacks came in a row: Paris, Brussels, etc. The idea is to stage terrorist attacks in general, whatever the cause. I do not mean to denounce a specific race or religion fight. What strikes me is the inconceivable irruption of violence in daily life. The originally common story of a child handover was gaining another dimension.
The position of the author
We are watching this from the position of an outsider, a bit like a TV-coverage. This feeling of having to see it while at the same time being out of it, helpless, is emphasized by the sound processing. We do not hear any sound of the slaughter. It is alienated. Just like an outsider. Voluntarily peeping, the camera is like an abstract personification of the viewer. It tries to capture information and in the eyes of the camera, being outside of the mall, we feel neutral and protected. The camera is the bridge between being involved or not.
Such terrible things happen everyday, only a few meters from us, we read them in the news' headline, then scroll over. Meaning of banality is: the quality or state of lacking new or interesting qualities; the quality or state of being banal. As long as we remain untouched, we somehow forget and live on. But the involved people's lives turn upside down immediately.
We were rejected for over 2 years from all the possible shooting locations - nobody wanted to touch the terror topic.