Official Selection

Denmark 2017
Duration: 06:00
Directed by: Farzaneh Omidvarnia
Screenplay: Farzaneh Omidvarnia
Animation: Farzaneh Omidvarnia
Technique: Puppet Animation
Music: Sassan Mohebbi
Dialogue language: No dialogue
Subtitles language: No subtitle

“To Be” is about a whole chunk of human society being stranded, from unborn fetus to the decrepit, seeking a venue whence they can establish a living, braving perils on this mission the lesser of which they wouldn't dare face in their home country. It is not about weathering a storm and coming to safety, it is about storming one unfriendly climate after the next. The question is: what it takes "to be"? This short movie is an attempt to answer this question, or in other words to establish whether it is better to stay put rather than brave the hardship of a migrant's life. Is a good part of humanity entrapped in forced hardship befallen their homelands by long past events and bequeathed by their ancestors? In “To Be”, we tried to pose these questions, and we used dolls to pose them. Dolls have inherent movement restriction, and the dolls used are not those particularly suited to animation; more importantly, dolls are lifeless, they don't possess a living, and this conveys some resemblance to the state of those who have "left" but have not "arrived" and are not "settled" yet; those who are in flight from chaos and soon find themselves in chaotic flight; and even if they survive it, there is no guarantee that the asylums they newly secured would secure a living for them.

---