In a near future Germany, queer people become even more marginalised and under threat. On the last day of winter, Omar is released from prison. As a first stop, he visits Ava, his best friend, who didn’t expect to see him. The world keeps falling apart and fear seems to defeat hope.
If, in Ghost Stories (screened at IndieLisboa in 2018), Carlos Pereira already reflected – in a “cryptic triptych” – on the search for what “had once been” (the flash of lightning, a face in the dark, a painter of ruins), in Slimane the director’s aim is to film an absence. In a future, as dystopic as the present, Omar leaves prison to discover that, while he was gone, a lot had changed: the persecution of queer people became normal in Germany and his group of friends fell apart. At the centre of the film is the disappearance of Slimane (presumably Omar’s partner) and in the middle of Slimane (the film) is a sequence shot where, in about five minutes, everything is said without saying much or without seeing more than an unfocused wallpaper followed by a hug. The emptiness of this “centre” literalises the absence of the protagonist, the disappearance of a way of life and the loss of a community. Faced with this road that one travels backwards, all that remains is the glow of memories and the violent fury of dancing. – Ricardo Vieira Lisboa
