As a filmmaker working in the Middle East, I have long been attentive to the distance between lived reality and the images circulated by media. In June 2025, while I was researching a 16 mm newsreel on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Israel attacked Iran, and I suddenly found myself inside the very images I had been analysing.
The constant circulation of destruction risks dulling our capacity to feel, transforming pain into spectacle.
That moment collapsed the boundary between history and presence, archive and experience, and forced a fundamental question: what is the most truthful personal image of such an event? In a world saturated with images of violence, representation often becomes repetition. The constant circulation of destruction risks dulling our capacity to feel, transforming pain into spectacle.
With FRUITS OF DESPAIR, I chose not to reproduce violence directly, but to trace its internal reverberations, the psychological fractures, the suspended time, the quiet terror of waiting. The film weaves archival material with fragments of everyday life, recorded during a period of forced displacement. Rather than offering answers, the film proposes a position of vulnerability, inviting the viewer to cross the boundary between seeing and feeling.
Nima Nassaj
