Gevar’s Land

Gevar comes from Syria and has recently started living in a suburb of Reims in France with his girlfriend and young son. He has decided to rent a plot at a community garden to grow his own vegetables, and to keep himself occupied. On his tiny apartment balcony, he carefully cultivates watermelon, zucchini, and eggplant seedlings before transferring them to his new parcel of land.

Over the four seasons that we follow Gevar, he discovers what an effort it takes for him and his seedlings to put down roots in a new place. The intimacy of the setting for this story—the family’s home and the allotment garden are the film’s only locations—makes all the more tangible the melancholy felt by Gevar, his family, and their Syrian friends.

Brief scenes charged with meaning reveal a family doing its utmost to start a new life, to leave their old life behind, and to deal with all the challenges that come along with these changes.