Ode to Loneliness

A woman lives alone in a hotel room, filming herself, the city and her dreams over the course of a month. Suspended in time, she drifts through the city’s intricate geometries, where sharp architectural edges subtly reshape her sense of scale, intimacy and desire. As days and nights blur into dream-time, shifting rhythms and fleeting light trace a quiet passage from loneliness to aloneness.

Rawane Nassif: ‘This film started years ago when I first left Lebanon and got attached to mundane objects that filled my ever-changing spaces ever since.

This film started when I lived alone in a hotel room for a year and experienced loneliness for the first time.

This film started when my friend passed by to drop me a darbuka, crossed the street, and passed away.

This film started when I locked myself voluntarily in the house, for a month, to write my reflections, only to find out that loneliness has been there all along.

This film started when I decided to leave, and began to film the space, lest I find bits of myself scattered in it.

…

This film got shattered into a million pieces in the Beirut explosion.

This film started again when I found myself alone again, stranded in a small village, during the COVID lockdown, and only then could I finish the edit, and only then could I realise that I will leave, again.’