23 KILOMETRES

By Noura KEVORKIAN

KARLOVY VARY INT'L FILM FESTIVAL - as FEST

Documentary - Completed 2015

On the Damascus Road in Lebanon’s beautiful Bekaa Valley, an aging Armenian man with late-stage Parkinsons takes one last journey.

Festivals
& Awards

Karlovy Vary 2015
Official Competition
Dubai DIFF 2015
Official Competition
Munich 2016
    • Year of production
    • 2015
    • Genres
    • Documentary
    • Countries
    • LEBANON, CANADA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
    • Languages
    • ENGLISH, ARABIC, ARMENIAN
    • Budget
    • N/A
    • Duration
    • 79 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Noura KEVORKIAN
    • Writer(s)
    • Noura KEVORKIAN
    • EIDR
    • 10.5240/15CF-2E6A-2D51-52E6-2C67-Q
    • Producer(s)
    • Paul SCHERZER (Six Island Productions), Noura KEVORKIAN (Six Island Productions)
    • Synopsis
    • This impressionistic film is a journey into the mind and life of a man with a crippling disease. In addition to the tremors and shakes, Barkev suffers from the lesser known ‘monster’ of Parkinson’s, the relentless hallucinations that swing him back and forth between time and space.

      A machine maker and an amateur cosmologist, Barkev can no longer speak.
      Yet through his journals, his machines, and powerful imagery with music, the film travels both physically and metaphorically into the past and the future of both the man and his country Lebanon, a country debilitated by sectarian division, not unlike Barkev’s diseased body, left a shell of its former self, dwelling on the past, unable to imagine its own future.
    • Partners & financing
    • Saaren Films, Canada
      Musa Dagh Productions, Lebanon
      Canada Council for the Arts
      Ontario Arts Council
      Enjaaz, a Dubai Film Market Initiative