When Will This Wind Stop

The Crimean Tatars, deported on the orders of Stalin at the end of the Second World War today find themselves once again chased out of their region by a demonstration of Russian force. The methods are less violent, but the intimidations are efficient nonetheless, and the exodus is massive. With the help of her camera, Aniela Astrid Gabryel reveals the effect of the occupation on different generations and its consequences on ordinary life. Junus has remained alone in the family house. The dining table is now too big. He sees his friends and family on Skype. Another man, whose name we will not learn, stays in Crimea after the departure of his wife and daughter to look after his grandmother. The latter experienced the deportations to Asia in the 1940s and, for her, history seems to be repeating itself. But here we will rather not talk so much of politics, rather of attachment to the land. When the static shot of a view of the steppes spreading to infinity flows into a stream of immobile portraits of the protagonists, the landscape and its inhabitants seem to be cut from the same cloth, which cannot be torn apart despite the forced separations.

Mourad Moussa

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