Silence reigns in the Berlin flat, but the film, whose complex montage encompasses the disintegration of Syria and life in exile, leaves no doubt that things are different in director Diana El Jeiroudi’s mind. Archival footage, loose portraits of confidants and an intimate perspective that explores her own position and her way of coping with trauma add up to a multi-layered document.

“Evil has a very loud and terrifying sound,” El Jeiroudi already noted as a child. Growing up in a country marked by surveillance and military parades has left its mark. In “Republic of Silence”, she looks for a way to come to terms with it, condensing old material, some of which shot in Syria, with a written monologue and stories of persons who also chose exile in the course of the civil war. The result is a complex filmic space that reveals the political and social disintegration of a nation. El Jeiroudi increasingly concentrates on showing a present outside Syria, life in emigration. Passing her husband's  nocturnal teeth grinding, birthday parties and disruptions in the international film festival scene, a life between tension and new beginnings becomes apparent.

In an infinite expanse of black, a white nuclear entity emerges and is invoked by a woman. She triggers a big bang and a shamanic dance ritual set to Intelligent House beats. Bubbling energy is bundled into a ball of pulsating lightning by women with antlers. Their movements seem to direct the course of the universe.

On a train to Rostov-on-Don in 1980, Malian-Mauritanian bursary holder Abderrahmane Sissako met the Angolan Afonso Baribanga, who had also been sent to the USSR. Both are supposed to learn Russian. Sissako studied film directing at the WGIK in Moscow, while Baribanga pursued a different career and eventually returned to Angola, where a post-colonial civil war was raging. Years later, Sissako sets off in search of his vanished friend, travelling to his own and Baribanga’s African homelands, where the old and new world powers have left devastating traces. In 1997, in a side section, DOK Leipzig presented the feature-length version of Sissako’s travelogue, which is steeped in contemporary and colonial history. The 2024 Retrospective presents an abridged version.