Twelve years in the making, Republic of Silence bears witness to tragedy on an epic scale, accompanied by an ever-expanding mosaic of fragile, deeply embedded moments from the filmmaker’s life, beginning with the memory at a young age when her father gives her a camera, right up to the present day.
Sometimes the frame holds a definitive version of what is happening in the world around her, and then it collapses. White letters emerge on a black screen, to conjure her inner world in this cinematic memoir.
A formal and orderly life in Berlin competes with a life in Damascus that is perforated by dictatorship and dismantled by wars and international political corruption. Director Diana El Jeiroudi seeks solace in cinema, music, the serenity of dreams, in friendship and the daily solidarity of a durable and abiding love story.
“A vivid, emotionally-charged insider view”
Jonathan Romney
Screen Daily
“It is part odyssey and part cinematic stream of consciousness“
Nick Cunningham
Business Documentary Europe
“There are personal films, and then there is Republic of Silence”
James Mottram
The National
Screenings
7 September 2021
World Premier at the 78th Venice International Film Festival 2021 – Out of Competition
5 December 2021
Laceno d’oro International Film Festival
Out of Competition
26 January 2022
Rotterdam International Film Festival
Harbour
20 March 2022
Thessaloniki Int’l Documentary Film Festival
Top Docs
1 April 2022
IFFF Dortmund+Köln
International Panorama
15 April 2022
Visions du Réel
Latitudes
5 May 2022
DOK.fest München
Best of Fest
10 May 2022
BelDocs
International Competition
15 May 2022
Carbonia Film Festival (Sardinia)
10 June 2022
Biografilm Festival
Celebration of Lives Award
22 June 2022
Bildrausch Film Fest Basel
Wound/Wonder
1 July 2022
Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival
Regional Competition
4 August 2022
Dokufest
View From the World
8 September 2022
Syrian Doc Days
8 November 2022
Mostra de Cinema Àrab i Mediterrani de Catalunya
22 November 2022
Transit Filmfest Regensburg
22 November 2022
RIDM RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES DU DOCUMENTAIRE DE MONTRÉAL
Panorama Essentials
27 October 2021
German Premier at the International Competition of 64th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film Dok Leipzig
Festivals and Sales: No Nation Films & Les Films D’ici
Diana El Jeiroudi 