Yesterday the Eye Didn't Sleep

From Viennale

A car is burning. A woman has disappeared. A failed love affair is the cause. A man has an accident and puts another man’s life at risk. Two tribes confront one another, with direct consequences for the lives of the protagonists, two sisters. The way in which these conflicts are settled may seem alien to Western rationality, although the interactions between those who make the decisions and those involved reveal a complexity and subtlety that call for reflection before judgement. The story takes place in the Beqaa Valley, and the Lebanese landscape is not merely a backdrop, nor is the region’s cultural life. The film develops a painstaking sense of framing: evidence of this can be found in the pan towards snow-covered Mount Hermon and in the use of the long shot as a narrative vehicle. It can also be seen in the elegant use of window frames to delimit the image from within a room. Framing and camera angle together define the visual field. That the Palestinian filmmaker once studied with Abbas Kiarostami can also be glimpsed in the way he films conversations from inside cars. His attention to the characters’ faces is itself a sustained visual pleasure, which in a beautiful musical passage becomes an anthropological wonder. (Roger Koza)