How do you film a system that ruins lives? 

If you are Anja Salomonowitz, you do this not by trying to document the inner mechanism of the system. Instead, you choreograph – with a maximum of theatricality – some 21 vignettes, and then ask 21 people affected by the system to play out their realities within the frame provided by your fantasy.  Further, you choose a dominant colour – in this case, yellow – and splash it all over the film, to remind everyone that the people presented share both the love for their partners and the unhappiness caused by the system.

Salomonowitz ‘s subjects are all touched by the intricate immigration rules affecting Austria’s so-called ‘intercultural couples.’ As the Austrian state insists on regulating their private realities, couples forced to stay apart or to live their lives between waiting rooms and language courses either collapse or try to inject all their strength into maintaining their relationships. This film emerged from the film-maker’s collaboration with an NGO that offers consultancies for people who are about to get married in Austria. However, the film’s language has nothing to do with conventional advocacy, leaning more towards the experimental: 727 Days without Karamo is a film about pain and absence: it manages to be simultaneously charming, romantic, wildly original and profoundly political.