We Began by Measuring Distance explores the paradox between proximity and distance, and how global events can intimately affect us while being distant.

Filmed from Berlin, the film opens with aerial views of Gaza, its architecture stripped to the bone. A cold and distant voice introduces a game invented by an anonymous collective to combat boredom: measuring distances, first between objects, then between cities hosting peace conferences. 

Little by little, the narration slips toward the "virgin forest," a terrain that remains free of any human footprint, intertwined with images of the threatened ecology of Gaza. Inspired by Western situationist and psycho-geographic cinema, the project questions the colonial legacy through borders, memory, and abstract cartographies. 

 We Began by Measuring Distance, awarded at the Sharjah Biennial 9 (2009)