Morning Circle

Directed by Basma Alsharif

Drifting through the streets of former East Berlin neighborhoods, Morning Circle traces the unsteady affective terrain of isolation and displacement, assimilation and oppression. In Basma al-Sharif’s (O, Persecuted, NYFF52) film, the bureaucratic condescension and violence of a residency interview sits alongside domestic scenes featuring a father and his young son. The film uncovers the loss and thrumming tensions of exilic life under Western Europe’s smooth gray surfaces.