Khaled Abdulwahed is a Syrian refugee living in Germany while his father, Sadallah, who remains in Syria, is unable to join him. The distance between them cannot be physically breached but in this beautiful and aching exploration of the cruelty of borders, Abdulwahed attempts to bridge their divide through cinema. Through their fuzzy phone calls, we learn of Sadallah’s past in East Germany sixty years prior, as an exchange student studying at university. Abdulwahed searches for Sadallah’s image in the archive and literally retraces his father’s footsteps from Dresden to Merseburg, meticulously manipulating the photographs. He intricately cuts out his father’s figure, and composites him into the images from his own contemporary reality, erasing the physical distance between them. A film filled with love and yearning, Background attempts to reach across the impossibilities of geography and history, seeking closeness despite the distance. (CT) Preceded by short “The Medallion”