New key art from Akiko Stehrenberger is always a thing to celebrate; here for Jimmy Goldblum's short documentary, A Broken House (Hiraeth). A Syrian Architecture student in the United States, who smashed his own models meticulously handmade of his Damascus neighbourhood, as Syria's civil war saw the real buildings destroyed, went viral in the displaced Syrian community.
The broken apartment building, almost a perverted symmetry on all sides of antennae, concrete and laundry lines, is essayed in a dull, smoky brown, the colour of decay. A man, Mohamad Hafez, stands at the top with his arms behind his back surveying the situation, both like god, but also like a witness. The image is striking, and terribly sad, at the same time.
No credit block here, but the title, also preserving the symmetry, is centred in the floating building. I believe this poster was commissioned due to an impending streaming release ofthe short, it is screening at the Architecture Film Festival in Rotterdam today, as well as available online through the New Yorker.
Festival laurels, and there are many of them, the film has been on the festival circuit since 2020, form a kind of base for this poster, which otherwise, floats in the sienna ether.