Guth Gafa Documentary Festival 2008

This Way Up
France, 2007, 60 min
Director: Georgy Lazarevski

Thu 15th • Óstán Loch Altan
Sun 18th • Óstán Loch Altan • 4:00pm

Just east of Jerusalem, the construction of the wall of separation continues a few metres from a senior citizen's home. Its unavoidable and spectacular progression, as seen through the eyes of the residents, gradually isolates them from the world of the living. Yet, between the walls and in the gardens of Our Lady of Pain, certain people still resist out of denial, in revolt, and for levity and nostalgia. The work of the partition wall has transformed the home into a fortified camp. On the one side stand the elderly whose families could no longer visit them without the authorization to cross this new border, on the other side, are the home employees, whose work permit cancellation had made their journey to the home a ‘race of the combatant’. The contrast between these two universes standing side by side, and sometimes overlapping because of absurd or dramatic situations, gave the film-maker the desire to show how one tries to resist being locked in, to survive the passing of time and survive being forgotten.