‘FÁR’ (Intrusion) - Review
On the last day of the Alexandria Short Film Festival, Gunnur Martinsdóttir Schlüter's 2023 Cannes special mention honoree FÁR (Intrusion) had its Egyptian premiere. Despite its brevity, FÁR (Intrusion) transcended beyond its five-minute runtime. With Schlüter at the helm as writer, director, and main lead, she was able to triumph trifold, delivering a powerful performance that will surely live in my mind for a while.
The short takes place inside a seemingly ordinary-looking café in Iceland. The protagonist, Anna (Schlüter), appears bored and uninterested among her otherwise engaged colleagues as their business meeting surrounding real estate is in motion. A sudden thud against the large windowpane of the café leaves Anna and her colleagues startled. The source of the sound was a seagull that directly crashed into the window, now lying half alive on the pavement outside the café. Broken out of her trance and grappling with hesitation, Anna exchanges glances with her colleagues before finally stepping outside the café to find the almost-dead bird. As Anna holds a rock in her hand, her mind is divided, swaying between two choices: whether to give the bird a swift death out of mercy or to leave it be in agony. While her colleagues stare at her from inside the cafe and children begin to gather around the spectacle in protest, Anna makes an irrevocable decision.
FÁR is a visual allegory. The sense of banality experienced by Anna inside the café before the incident is cleverly elevated by the muted colour palette. The usage of a 4:3 aspect ratio on top of minimal dialogue and no music feels suffocating and urgent, highlighting the minutely changing expressions of the characters as the story progresses. Schlüter doesn't force you to interpret the story in a specific way, as there remains so much to dissect in those 5 minutes.
Ruminating on the contrast between the well-sanitised environment of the cafe that held the boring business meeting and the ruckus on the street caused by the seagull's injury, in juxtaposition of Anna's actions and her colleagues' indifference, I am reminded of American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin's ‘I am terrified of the moral apathy’ quote.
The glass windows of the café are the only separator between these two worlds, one which relies on our negligence and desensitisation to those around us, animal or human, and the other, a more emotionally and physically taxing one, that denounces the herd mentality and asks us to observe these intrusions through the lens of care and humanity and not just act upon that notion but also deal with the consequences, however unpleasant.