Distant Constellation

This haunted reverie drops us inside an Istanbul retirement home, where the battle-scarred residents –pranksters, historians, artists and would-be Casanovas– bask in the camera’s attention. A creaky- voiced woman confides her personal account of the Armenian genocide. A sweetly deluded pianist performs a composition before confessing his love. A blind photographer fiddles with his flash as he points his own camera back at us. Full of Tarkovskian atmospherics, Shevaun Mizrahi’s playful, immaculately controlled film finds hypnotizing rhythms in the residents’ limbo-like state. Meanwhile, outside, ominous construction equipment transforms the land.