[Y]EARS IN BRACKETS 2020-2022

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SYNOPSIS
2020 to 2022 have been years in brackets that have reinforced inequalities, anger and popular uprisings. Confined to Montreal during this period, the director's projects were abruptly canceled. Her need to film led her to ask fifty friends, acquaintances or friends of friends, artists and intellectuals from Canada and elsewhere, to send her images and sounds. She then mixed them with news, excerpts from films, literary works and poetry, to make an inventory of the survival of our world. The result is a documentary poem, feminist, optimistic and committed, punctuated with reminders of deaths: that of bell hooks, Moustapha Safouan, Etel Adnan, David Graeber, Hélène Châtelain, Sarah Maldoror, Nawal El Saadawi, Marie-Claire Blais, Maradona, Moufida Tlatli, Lina Ben Mhenni and Jean-Luc Godard.

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DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT I spent the two years of the pandemic in Montreal. My friends writers, painters, musicians continued to write, to paint, to compose and I could not shoot a film. I realized that I depended on others I was filming. So, I asked friends, acquaintances in Canada and elsewhere, to send me images, sounds, videos. “Send what you want, in the language and form of your choice: sound, visual, silent. Answer as you wish.” Many responded with sound recordings, videos, poems, songs, paintings, music, theater scenes, scenes from everyday life, reflections; in different languages. Several lives have come to me. I mixed them with the news of the world, with scenes that I captured in Quebec; the passage of the seasons, cultural and political events. In the suffocation of confinement, I had the impression of having freed myself from this dependence on the others that I need to film, and at the same time, I gave them back their power over their images and their texts. The sounds, the images that I received from everywhere, in all languages, in all formats, led me to imagine that the borders of Montreal were open to all nationalities of the world. I let myself be inhabited by "this feeling of belonging to humanity through an additional country, called cinema", as Serge Daney said. The film addresses the pandemic in its original meaning: pandemos means all the people, everyone. Associating heterogeneous scenes, putting together fragments of lives from different countries that usually exclude each other. To create a story that in a single gesture speaks of humanity in its deepest despair and hope. To associate distant and lonely images for a multiple, just and new co-belonging to the world. 2020 to 2022 are years in brackets in a still, unequal, interconnected and exasperated world. The pandemic has reinforced inequality and anger. Voices of indignation and solidarity have been raised from one continent to another. What if the convergence of struggles spread like wildfire. And what if Walter Benjamin were to say true: “There is not a single moment that does not carry within itself its revolutionary chance.” A virus could be not just a disease but a small revolutionary chance.

Film Credits YEARS IN BRACKETS 2020-2022 Original title: ANNÉES EN PARENTHÈSES 2020-2022 DOCUMENTARY ESSAY 95 minutes. CANADA 2023 Language: French Subtitles: English HD 24 i/s Ratio: 1.85:1 Dolby 5.1 Screening copy: DCP Directed/ Camera/ Editing: Hejer Charf With 50 participants worldwide Assistant on the film: Nadine Ltaif Sound editing and re-recording: Patric Favreau Colorimetry and online editing: Denis Pilon Titles and graphic design: Mélanie Bouchard Music: Chris Zabriskie, Amel Hamrouni, Khemais Bahri Translation and subtitles: Joël Marchand

Click for press kit in French dossier de presse
Press agent of the film : Isabelle Buron
Contact : isabelle.buron@outlook.fr

Audience reactions following two private screenings (in French)

About the film by Mustapha Abdoun (in French)
Commentaires sur le film
Paris - Cinéma Nouvel Odéon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yRJLQQhG4w Montréal - Cinéma ONF/NFB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yRJLQQhG4w
Charlie Prince about the film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpnXp6xzCjs Photos du film
Photos cinquante participant.es

Participants in order of appearance

Barbara Ulrich

Camilla Adami

Wassyla Tamzali

Marie-France de Saint-Félix

Faïka Medjahed

Karim Kattan (Radio Alhara Bethléem)

Yasmine Haj

Alia Kdeih

Richard

Aziz Farès

Joël Marchand

Martine Audet

Sana Diab

Gladys Nader

Nadine Ltaif

Rula Jurdi

Charlie Prince

Aniel Prasad

Max Duverneuil

Gabriella Scheer

Claire Varin

Olga Pudelko

Sylvie Gendron

Nadia Haddaoui

Donia Boubaker

Gilda Khiari

Jooneed Khan

Saliha Béroual

Gloria Escomel

ONENESSA

Lise Harou

René Marchand

Nancy Vickers

Maïr Verthuy

Nadia Ltaif

Pamela D. Stewart

Latifa Lakhdhar

Daniel Fauteux

Janet Lamb

Marie-Christine Guité

Hani Latif Zaloum

Hamid Chbouki

Sophie Bessis

Diane Beaulieu

Nicolas Latif

Mohamed Mimoun- Forum Jeunesse Saint-Michel

Rachida Azdouz

Sarah Martinez

Antoine Akhrass

Produced by Nadja Productions Inc. with the help of ACIC-National Film Board of Canada (NFB /ONF)

Partner of the film: Les Ateliers Sauvages

The film will be showing from October 25 to November 6, 2023, every day at 1:15 p.m. except Tuesdays. And Tuesdays November 14 and 21 at 1:15 p.m. at CINÉMA L’ÉPÉE DE BOIS , 100 Mouffetard street, Paris 5

In the presence of the director and her guests.

Tickets

Revue de presse Années en parenthèses