Notturno

Several years ago, Gianfranco Rosi lectured to an audience of university students (myself included) about his next project: it would be filmed exclusively at night, he said, and take place over much of the Middle East. He asked that we not release any of this information - assured of the secret pact with his audience. I had more or less forgotten about this project until recently, when I discovered it had been selected as the Italian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 93rd Academy Awards, and was being distributed by MUBI.

Notturno ("night," or "of the night") is a collection of brief glimpses into the lives of people across Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. From dark swamplands to inner cities, fisherman, soldiers and teachers, to name a few, are brought into the documentary's compass. Few words are spoken by those selected, and much of their action or routine takes place in quietness - a sort of calm in the aftermath of a terrible storm. Rosi's observational and distant study only partly takes places at night; many scenes are filmed in the soft glow of dawn or twilight, and many in bright sunlight.

For a while, I was sceptical about the documentary's artistic license. There is near-perfect composition to each frame, and the theatrical recreation of war by the amateur, psychiatric patients reminded me of Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing (where civilians and dictators are made to dramatise the traumas of their past). And yet, I found myself compelled by Notturno's visual storytelling, by the sparseness of its landscapes and sound. There are stories within these images, and sometimes they need to speak for themselves, without the aid of conventional narration or voiceover.