Waiting for the flood

Original title: Waiting for the flood

Chris Pellerin • 1h 13min • 2022

With: Meruzhan Gulhian, Joseph Hagopian, Nedzhib Hyusmen, Dranafil Loshaj, Ardiana Bajraktari

Competition Prix PRESENT 2024

Synopsis :

Under Article 9TER, Meruzhan, Ardiana, Nedzhib, and Drafanil have applied for residency rights in Belgium in order to undergo kidney transplants. While awaiting the decision, they find themselves in a dramatic limbo: kept alive by dialysis yet constantly threatened with expulsion, which equates to death.

Photos

Press

“Filming here becomes a way of being with others, of accompanying them. Filming would then be like showing the tenuous, invisible relationship that develops with someone. It is by filming this movement, this exchange from one to the other, that encounters occur; that each sequence is also a hidden portrait of the healthcare sector. Through the machines, the voices of the staff, the corridors of the hospital, it is indeed the medical world which is revealed little by little through the experience that the protagonists have within the dialysis department.”
Elias Preszow – Karoo.me

Reviews

“The parallel is striking between a State apparatus that filters the influx of sick foreigners to reduce their numbers and the dialysis machine that filters toxins from the blood to keep these individuals alive. For Meruzhan, Osmen, Ardjana, and Dranafil, who are trapped in the infinity of these machines, it is time that is frightening and absurd. Throughout the bureaucratic process, dialysis marks their time and keeps them alive. Certainly. But it also wears down the body and mind in the long term.”
Chris Pellerin.