Via Bridge to a Tunnel

‘The Angel, Azrail’ is a film project made from the contributions of 35 women who interpreted poems written by Mustafa Boga. Based on the poems, the creators were asked to make films of around a minute long by using any type of film medium they preferred, including performances, short films, animation and music videos.

The poems depict the moment when Azrail is on earth to take the life of those who are dying. They are written from Azrail’s perspective while helping people to accept their death. In the poems the main character is Azrail who is often identified as Azreal, the Angel of Death, in the Hebrew Bible. The Qur’an also refers to Azrail, and in the Islamic Persian alphabet the spelling is Izrail. The name translates to ‘the help of God’, ‘help from God’, or ‘one whom God helps’.

Between 2017-2020 the artists created 35 films which were put together to create a visual compilation. Through the films, we travel all around the world from a city time-lapse in Tehran to a little boat on the River Nile. We meet people from Italy, the UK, the USA and Turkey and we hear French, Spanish, German, Icelandic, Arabic, Greek and Danish. They dance, perform, cry, swim and animate. Songs were made from the poems, conversations were created, and through this collected experience we enter a world where death is a tangent to life.