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Letter to Nikola

director: Hara Kaminara

original title: Lettre à Nikola

country: Belgium

year: 2021

running time: 50 min.

synopsis

The audiovisual letter to the unborn child is an intimate confession on the border between the personal and the social. In despair and frustration with the state of the world, a testimony to a time gone awry is born. The rescue ship Aquarius, whose crew helps refugees stranded in the stormy waters of the Mediterranean, is a space of imagination built on the humanist message of a photographer of stories of human misfortune. An existential shudder and schizophrenia of experiences framed by the numbers and statistics of the dead and survivors on the one hand, and the personal stories of the refugees on the other. The beginning of a new life in the face of a civilization confronted with uncertainty and unprecedented images of destruction.

“Although I wanted to record your first days on this earth, it was a long time before I took the first photographs. I don't know what scares me more: the idea of seeing a two-dimensional reproduction of you or the fact that the eye of the camera separates us.” (Hara Kaminara)

biography

Hara Kaminara is a “visual storyteller” who works with photography, documentary, experimental film, and visual art, focusing on social issues and questions. As a photographer, she participated in three rescue missions of the Aquarius and with this experience she made the film Lettre à Nikola (2020).

more about film

director:	Hara Kaminara
producer:	Julie Frères

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