Aralkum

Uzbekistan, Germany, 2022, 13' 

The images of this documentary plunge the viewer into a setting reminiscent of science-fiction, a land that was once on the sea and is now inhabited by just a bunch of people, the last survivors of an exodus. An area whose ecosystem was based on fishing has been almost completely disrupted by extensive cotton farming in neighbouring territories. The sea has receded, the weather has changed, many have left. Those who stayed struggle every day to make a living out of the sea and the soil. The pictures of those bodies and spaces in which vegetation fights the desert, once occupied by water, become images of a post-apocalyptic scenario in which the actual place is turned into a sort of melancholy border space suspended between life and death. This feeling is heightened by the contrast provided by texts and images from the past that tell and show the richness that once was, the colours and light of a fecund life, that currently only lives in the memories of the elderly who slowly wander through the deserted streets.