Barzakh

In a Chechen town, a man vanishes. Witnesses saw the state police take him away, but no one knows where he is. His family receives contradictory information; his fate becomes increasingly uncertain as time goes by. Poetic documentary about the aftermath of war, uncertainty and the twilight area between life and death.

What is it like to live in a city fractured by war, where large mosques are flanked by torture chambers? Where the visions of soothsayers and prophets offer more reassurance than official statements issued by the government? In his directorial debut, filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravicius followed families of missing Chechen people from 2007 to 2009. They have no idea where their loved ones are, nor whether they are even still alive. The boundaries between fact and fiction slowly start to blur. The differences between the information provided by the authorities and the predictions offered by clairvoyants are also becoming increasingly minimal. The families left behind are supported by neighbours, other family members and people who were once arrested themselves and came back from that sinister place of no return. Those who find themselves in ‘Barzakh’ are neither in the land of the living, nor the kingdom of the dead; they exist in limbo, in a liminal state where communication takes place solely in dreams.