Daniel Asadi Faezi

in retrospect

Immigrant workers built a shopping mall for the Munich Olympics 1972. In 2016 this same place becomes the site of a racist shooting. „And now this hate.“, concludes a woman in a Sohrab Shahid Saless’ film „Addressee Unknown“ (1983).

Waking Up in Silence

A summer’s day in a former German military barrack: children forced to flee Ukraine have found refuge here. In their games, they discover military symbols from the past and link them to their experiences.

Aralkum

The Aral “Sea” powerfully reveals the deadly impact of human activities—in this case, the intensive cultivation of cotton in the USSR—on an ecosystem. Daniel Asadi Faezi (The Absence of Apricots, VdR 2018) and Mila Zhluktenko (Find Fix Finish, VdR 2017) film the shore’s last inhabitants, who have lost their way of life to the desertification of their environment. A beautiful and poignant work about our probable future.

Where We Used to Swim

Lake Urmia in Northern Iran was once the largest lake in the Middle East. Human influence brought upon a devastating drought that the lake could not withstand, and today, just 5% of the original lake remains.

Opera Glasses

One night with the guest and workers at the Kyiv Opera House in Ukraine.

The Absence of Apricots

A documentary fairy-tale about the struggle for identity in the Hunza Valley set in a village located in the Northern-Pakistan somewhere between the past and the future. A magnificent turquoise lake in between rough, steep cliff surrounds the small village. But the lake hasn’t been always there. One day, an enormous landslide blocked a river. In a few months, this river turned into a huge lake, which is now up to 30km long. Thousands of homes and fields were flooded. Entire villages disappeared forever. Thousands of people got dislocated and had to look for different places where to live. What is left are the stories of those that once used to live there which are passed on from generation to generation.