Maalbeek

On March 22, 2016, just after nine o’clock in the morning, a suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle car of a subway train that had just left Maalbeek station in Brussels. A young woman sitting behind him was seriously injured. Three months later she awakes from her coma, remembering nothing of the explosion. There is only a black hole in her memory, and it feels as if the events happened to someone else.

The gap in her memory becomes like a missing jigsaw piece which she needs to continue with her life. The short film Maalbeek follows her in her search for tangible proof of her presence on the subway on that particular Tuesday morning. Speaking over a collage of animations, double images, edited photos, news flashes, and CCTV footage, she gives a matter-of-fact account of what she has achieved in her search.

The soundtrack is ominous, with a constant undertone of threat that swells with each new sound that enters the mix: the announcer on the platform, the snippets of news, the wailing sirens of the emergency vehicles, the panicked crying of a child, and the haunting strains of “Für Elise.”