Five Years After the War

Tim, the cousin of filmmaker Samuel Albaric, grew up in Paris without a father. As a child this didn't bother him—after all, superheroes have absent fathers, don’t they? But the fact that his mother is Jewish and his father is Arab sometimes causes confusion, and by the time he reaches adulthood, this lack of a clear identity has begun to gnaw at him. Tim visits his father, originally a refugee from the war in Iraq, at his home in Montpellier. Lighthearted but certainly not superficial, this short, largely animated documentary is a subtle and personal exploration of essential questions. Who are you if there's a part of yourself that you know nothing about? What happens when you meet a parent you don’t know? Following the first reunion, Tim discovers that he has to fill in some of the gaps himself. At the heart of the film is the meeting between father and son—and it's no coincidence that this is the only part that isn't animated.