Synopsis
A desert landscape, as if from another planet. A few lonely, rusty shipwrecks. Low desert scrub grows around them to hold the sand together during the merciless storms. Aralkum, the Aral Desert, is the bare seabed, the last thing left of the Aral Sea.
By weaving together different cinematic textures, the short film ARALKUM re-imagines the dried-up Aral Sea, allowing an old fisherman to set sail one last time.
'The shortfilm prize goes to a film that opens a door on a landscape swept by human excess.A poetic, political and aesthetic work where words and archives give birth to a sensorial experience on disappearance, loss, memory, oblivion, absence.An unexpected and masterful cinematographic gesture that questions our humanity. [Jury Statement 53 VdR]
'A film that combines a unique mix of documentary and experimental form. A warning story about the uncontrolled range that a human intervention to the environmental balance can take. A new cinematic reality very well constructed by the authors, in an impressive movie. The Special Jury Award is bestowed to Aralkum.' [Jury Statement DRAMA ISFF]
