Dor
Jannes Callens
Belgium, Romania | 2022 | 52 min
World premiere
Language : Romanian
Subtitles : English, French
A young man returns to his native Romania to make a fresh start as a shepherd. Jannes Callens’ film moves at the same pace as a pasture crossing, between expedition, pause and contemplation. Striking images of this profession merge with existential considerations. How can you guide a flock when you’re a little lost yourself?
The film opens on an uneasy face in the darkness, a young shepherd leading a herd of animals with his comrades through bucolic Romanian lands. Dor (Longing) shifts between mesmerizing landscapes, aesthetic shots and discussions by the fire, on the grass or in the hills. Even when faced with great preoccupations, the mind is stimulated by the very act of moving one’s body. Confidences emerge: about the harshness of choices, indecisions, the regrets of a restless youth, but also violence encountered along the way. Meticulous photography – particularly of the twilight, verging on a certain strangeness, before darkness comes to swallow it all – accompanies these tumbleweeds. The real journey is not spatial; instead, it is psychological, even metaphysical. The shepherd is also a graffiti artist and amateur tattooist: as many ways of leaving a trace or signs of his passage, or of marking his will to exist and expressing secret sorrows, in the hope of moving forward.
William Le Personnic
2020, A Dark Horizon of Thought
2020, Seeing & Being, Framing and Freeing
2019, Deaf To Silence
