In the Romanian village of Dragalina, the 17 years old boy, Radu, is gnawing his boredom alongside his unstable mother. Trapped in this heavy and sluggish universe, the teenager seems to be expecting a hypothetical change of life. The filmmakers leave for a journey to meet this young man, their cousin, who is struggling with a quest for identity and meaning that he can't really figure out.

Stock images of hijackings, political turbulence.

There is a parallel world, Venice, clouds and karaoke. Birds of war.

Through the fate of two Samoan fa'afafine (« transvestites »), the film evokes a certain distance to the world, between contemplation and renouncement. This attitude finds itself in correspondance with that, enigmatic, of a young girl who lives at the end of a remote village. The directors invites us here to an impressionistic rediscovery of the ancient myth of Daphne's metamorphosis in the polynesian context.

Counterpoint is a video installation I made from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, who draws a portrait of Edward Said. I staged setting the poem, two faces of the same person in a black space. I wanted that the faces become separated from the space they float in.

Romantic waterfalls, rapids, blue mountains...

"In 1996, I was staying in the village of Mankien in South Sudan to film the war which was taking place. At the time, I thought that making a film about an area struggling with such a severe conflict would almost have to be an act of duty. Once there, the reality appeared completely different from what I initially imagined it would be. The war that was all around me was not only a struggle between an oppressive government and a downtrodden minority but a latent conflict driven by power and economic interests. Back in Belgium, I felt overwhelmed by a strong feeling of helplessness and disillusionment to the point of never showing these images, up to now. A short while ago, I was told that the village of Mankien had been subjected to a massacre orchestrated by the Khartoum government with more than the slight complicity of Western oil companies. Closed District is not only a film about the war in South Sudan, but more about wars in general, about the death and distress that often ensues. It also raises the question of the filmmaker's place in a situation of conflict". (Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd)