In Memoriam features a mother in dialogue with her daughter, who died in the earthquake of January 12, 2010. Since then, one question has pierced her: When did you die? It’s a sentence she’s never been able to put into words, but finally utters, breathless, unable even to cry.

The daughter, who has returned from somewhere else, remembers almost nothing. She asks for news, seeks to understand, and tries to bear her mother’s pain, this frozen, silent pain that has never found a way out.

The dialogue is heavy, hesitant, shot through with broken memories, silences and powerlessness. The mother, consumed by solitude, remains unresponsive. But at the heart of this suspended speech, a discreet breath seeps in. A fragile hope that dares to say it may be time to start living again.

In sharp language, where every word seems carved from memory, In Memoriam opens a breach in the silence of January 12. An attempt to speak the unspeakable, to make room for what has never been said.

Cie Bazou