23 Kilometres

Suffering from an advanced stage of Parkinson's disease, Barkev Kevorkian spends his time recalling the past when he worked at a foundry, loved driving fast, and enjoyed time with his little girl. In this courageous documentary essay, the Lebanese-born director contemplates all the things a serious illness takes from your life.

"The parents of Barkev Kevorkian survived the Armenian genocide, and his own life in Syria and Lebanon was never easy. Today, in the final chapters of his life, he is in an advanced stage of Parkinson's disease. Constant tremors and fatigue have made his body a helpless prisoner. Uttering a single sentence costs him so much energy that he no longer even tries to talk. This courageous documentary essay shot by his daughter Noura gives form to the thoughts this contemplative man struggles to set down in his notebook. A fragmented impression emerges out of the blur of the past: a love of fast driving, work at the foundry during the Civil War, and a fondness for cosmological theories. Is it reality? Memories? Or perhaps an optical illusion, that insidious escort of a nervous disorder. It seems that it's time to set out for a final 23 km trip across Lebanon's beautiful Bekaa Valley to visit a beloved bakery and a dairy farm, and thereby metaphorically make peace with ineluctably approaching death."
(Martin Horyna)