Alsateh (The Roof) is a lingeringly poetic film charting the Palestinian director Kamal Aljafari's journey back to his family and homeland Palestine.. Despite the intense political background for the film its focus is universal, as the director explores the political and social context for his story through a lyrical registration of the human capacity to imagine and create worlds across time and space.
At the heart of the film is the belief that home is a feeling as well as a place. Even if a home is bombed to pieces its inhabitants will take it with them wherever they go, unable to leave something so integral to their sense of self behind. The film's slow pan shots along the walls of destroyed homes evoke traces of what once was without resorting to memories of the past. Instead the film is an aesthetical and political manifestation of the architecture of place and identity firmly located in the present.
At the heart of the film is the belief that home is a feeling as well as a place. Even if a home is bombed to pieces its inhabitants will take it with them wherever they go, unable to leave something so integral to their sense of self behind. The film's slow pan shots along the walls of destroyed homes evoke traces of what once was without resorting to memories of the past. Instead the film is an aesthetical and political manifestation of the architecture of place and identity firmly located in the present.
