Drifting through the streets of former East Berlin neighborhoods, Morning Circle traces the unsteady affective terrain of isolation and displacement, assimilation and oppression. In Basma al-Sharif’s (O, Persecuted, NYFF52) film, the bureaucratic condescension and violence of a residency interview sits alongside domestic scenes featuring a father and his young son. The film uncovers the loss and thrumming tensions of exilic life under Western Europe’s smooth gray surfaces.
