The director’s grandparents, who have been together for over 60 years, recall (and re-edit) fragments of their life together. The film, originally intended as part of a video installation, captures a return to a nonlinear past, while also probing how textures and the materiality of images can be inscribed onto the cinema screen.
A play of light, shadows, and pixels, Alma Buhagiar’s film comes from afar, from a cinema now forgotten where a superimposition, a portrait dissolving into the landscape, could be suspense, climax, could be a story in itself. Beyond its rarity, the charm of this PATCHWORK is mainly the unspoken seriousness of this game of filming with the grandparents. Of course, showing their love is certainly a pleasure, listening to their spells is a curiosity, and making them dance in each other’s arms is pure joy. Still, it is just as certain that the three of them are aware they are staging scenes for eternity, equally concerned with the past, present, and future. In fact, it may be that this is what any home movie is doing. (Călin Boto)
Alma Buhagiar is a filmmaker. Her films have been screened at international festivals and have received awards from the Romanian Filmmakers Union, CinemaIubit, Alter-Native, and the Gopo Awards. In 2023, she served on the SMART7 international jury at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and co-tutored film directing workshops at the Ideo Ideis Festival. She has participated in programs such as Sarajevo Talents, Film Plus, Cinema Next, Her Story, Her Future, Transilvania Talent Lab and Let’s Go Digital. She has exhibited video installations in venues including the White Night of Galleries, the Goethe-Institut, and Phramakon. In 2024, she was responsible for the visual identity of the Z9 Poetry Festival. Her practice also extends to directing commercials and music videos, and she has recently collaborated with friends on several videopoems.
