APRIL: The lives of others

This month, Exile Room listens in on two deeply personal confessions, unspooling the yarn of memory that reaches almost poetic heights. The only common denominator of this month’s films is sudden loss.

Black Sun

On a summer night in 1978, French artist Hugues de Montalembert was returning to his apartment in New York, when he run into two burglars. During the violent assault that followed, one of them threw paint thinner in his face and within a few moments, the artist went blind. 18 months later he would set out on a journey to the ends of the earth, experiencing a new reality and rediscovering the world all over again!

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Elena

At the beginning of the 90s, Elena, a young girl from Brazil, would travel to New York to fulfill the same dream her mother had when she was her age: to become a movie actress. Leaving her childhood behind, forever tainted by the military dictatorship, she also “abandoned” her 7-year-old sister, Petra. Two decades later, Petra arrives in the same American metropolis looking for the traces of her long lost sister.

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