69 MINUTES OF 86 DAYS (Egil Håskjold Larsen, Norway). 70 minutes. Rating: NNNN
Egil Håskjold Larsen’s 69 Minutes Of 86 Days is a refugee narrative stripped of all politics. The filmmaker simply tags along with a displaced Syrian family as they make their way to a new home in Europe.
Shooting in long, fluid takes with no narration and no onscreen identification, Larsen has made a movie about waiting and movement. We watch three-year-old Lean, her parents and their friends queuing for food, lining up to board a ship, walking from a port to find a ride to the next place.
Sometimes Lean gets cranky, but not very often mostly she’s just curious about what’s going on and excited about the journey. She’s a kid, in other words, and her family is doing everything they can to make her life as normal as possible in a time of unimaginable upheaval. And if you can watch this movie and come away thinking these people are an existential menace to your way of life, I don’t want to know you.