Far From Where?

1989, fiction, 24 minutes, French with english subtitles

Remastered in 2018 with support of Michel Giroux and ACIC (National Film Board of canada)

Prix Normande-Juneau in 1989 for Best Short Film “for the perfect execution of its ideas and direction, the remarkable density of its images and words, for the unparalleled sensitivity of its soundtrack, and for its gaze which transcends the individual to become universal.”

Credits        Reviews        Screenings Backstory

Synopsis

An attempt to represent feelings of exile through cinema, the gap between images of cold and snow in a frozen landscape and the sounds coming from a hot country far from…. where?

trailer

Reviews

A work that enlarges our field of vision

“Far from Where? is a film offered consciously to its adopted country. The images come from here, but without a sense of belonging…

“The film works to reconstruct the sensation of displacement through the text and the juxtaposed images that provide a subtle echo. The filmmaker is constantly present through a voiceover that delivers a superb text — one could almost say a tale from the Middle East. It retraces her childhood, her country, observing the gaps between her countries of origin and adoption. There is no attempt to ‘make sense’ of her exile. Emotion flows through the choice of images that create feeling as the words spur forth…From the heart of her exile, Michka Saäl has produced a work that enlarges our field of vision….”

Michel Beauchamp, 24 Images

The voice of a filmmaker

“Voices from the past are superimposed on images and sounds of Quebec: the heat of midday under a Mediterranean sun, the games of a young girl with a Bedouin boy, and an attempt to run away that allows the young girl to discover her city looks onto the sea…

 “Saäl manages to walk a fine line throughout the film, thanks to the rigorous framing and editing of the images, and above all, thanks to a serious text with real content. From the shock produced by the intimacy of the narrator against the Quebec landscape, Far from Where? generates sincerity, which Saal delivers in a trembling voice.  

It’s a voice that comes from afar and that speaks with the short and simple sentences of childhood. A voice of profound turmoil that never lifts the veil of modesty. If it’s gentle to the ear, this voice, it’s because it’s the voice of a filmmaker.”

Marcel Jean, Le Devoir, June 7, 1989

Backstory

Less exiled

“The fact that I won the best short at the Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois was, for me, something precious: the moment where I told myself, “Hey, I belong, just a little, to this family.’”

Carte blanche to Michka Saäl

Ciné-bulles, Vol 9, No 4, 1989

Cinema lessons after school

“Fernand Bélanger wanted to edit Far from Where?, but on one condition: he would not cut one frame unless I was there, with him, at the editing table. Result: I learned more about editing in my months with him than in five years at university. And not only in editing, but also how to construct images, how to build a narrative without losing the interior vision, how to live without dying from emotions.”

Carte blanche to Michka Saäl

Ciné-bulles, Vol 9, No 4, 1989

 

An elsewhere presence

“Nadine Ltaif, my sister-friend, who is a poet, accepted to lend her images to the film, her ‘elsewhere’ presence, her grace and labyrinthine gaze.”

Carte blanche à Michka Saäl

Ciné-bulles, Vol 9, No 4, 1989

 

Michka told me it’s the story of a young woman who has just arrived in Quebec. Easy, I thought. I did not have to speak, simply be myself. I was quite naïve back then. I had no idea that, in doing almost nothing, the camera would film my inner self. I asked Michka, does it show that I’m Arab? No, she said, you look Swedish…

Nadine Ltaif, actress, 2018