Exile touches the deepest part of the human being: one’s identity, one’s being-in-the-world, one’s relationship with the other. It constitutes an uprooting, a rupture, a departure from oneself, but also, and above all, an act of survival. It is not merely a geographical circumstance, nor simply the consequence of separation from one’s homeland. It is also a state of mind, an exile from oneself to oneself. Thus, autism, schizophrenia, or other mental illnesses may be considered particular forms of inner exile. And for some, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, exile is inherent to all of us, “a fundamental condition of our being-in-the-world.”
The relationship between art and exile is all the more complex in that art can be a survival of exile — a bandage on the wound of an inflicted stripping, as Darwish evokes when he speaks of poetry as “the language of exile, the home of the homeless traveler” — or a survival through exile — an inner retreat sought for self-preservation, or preservation from the world. Serge Daney summed it up thus: “Cinema is my land of exile.”
In both cases, art becomes a place of repose, a habitable land. Through a film cycle, a film concert, an exhibition, several conversations and a performance, we aim to explore the complexity of this experience. And yet, in today’s world, marked by genocides, wars, mass crimes, and multiple episodes of hate-driven violence, we cannot approach exile merely as an intimate experience. It is the festival’s duty to also adopt a political and critical perspective, affirming its position in the face of the inhumanity of which we are all witnesses — and, to some extent, accomplices.
Some of the participants: Hisham Matar, writer; Haile Gerima, filmmaker; Hiam Abbass, actress; Dino D’Santiago, singer; Carmen Chaplin, actress and filmmaker; Clément Cogitore, artist and filmmaker; Alberto Ruiz Samaniego, philosopher; Farouk Mardam-Bey, editor and historian; the artists of the Dahaleez collective.