Familiar Phantoms
Søren Lind & Larissa Sansour / United Kingdom & Palestine / 2024 / World Premiere / 42 min
Palestinian-Danish artist duo Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind's new film is an elegiac and experimental work about memory, history and trauma.
‘Familiar Phantoms’ is inspired by anecdotes from artist Larissa Sansour’s own family history and her old childhood home in Bethlehem, making it her most personal film to date. Combining live action scenes, Super 8 footage and private photos, the edit reconstructs the labour of memory, constantly revisiting the same imagery alongside new fragments in an existential search for meaning. The exploratory and contemplative camera moves around an abandoned mansion that serves as the seat of memory. Vignettes play in the rooms, adding a theatrical dimension to the work, just as memory is constantly reworking, amplifying, adding and subtracting.