Wandering Letter

France 2023, 51 min, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Creole, French, Japanese and Norwegian, Hebrew & English subtitles

As part of her long-standing multilayered cinematic exploration of language and speech, filmmaker Nurith Aviv revisits a personal childhood memory related to the letter “R.” The consonant’s varied and sometimes contradictory pronunciations—whether it rises from deep in the throat, rolls off the tongue, or remains near-silent—position its unique sound as one that immediately marks the speaker’s origin, ethnicity, and even gender. It is a sound that needs to be controlled, and sometimes even subjugated. In her new wonderful (and, dare we say, wanderful!) film, six people who work with and think about language professionally, including Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård and Farsi translator Orly Noy, talk about the importance of “R” in shaping how they experience their identities.

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