Ayala Berger

Everyone died

The starting point of this work came from a repressed memory of a moment at my grandmother’s funeral, eight years ago. A group of people were congregated around a pit in the ground - serious, sad, and weeping. I alone was unable to control myself, and started to laugh. The work is my attempt to relive the comedic, awkward, almost-forgotten memory of that moment at the cemetery in Netanya. For this purpose, I recruited my mother along with her friends and acquaintances, several of whom were at the original funeral. The film, like the memory, remains elusive and fragmented. It is split into two options of documentation: one of the act, and one of the reconstructed event. The failed attempt to go backwards, into the depths of a forgotten memory, exposes the complicated relationship between mother and daughter . Through it, I examine where the ability to reconstruct subjective memory begins and ends, and whether cinema / art has the power to bring about reparation or healing.