Simona & Eden is a short-film directed by Tamar Goren.
Director of films, musicals and short-films, Goren presented her work to the jurors of the 47th edition of Giffoni Film Festival and, after the projection, she conceded them a short but intense Q&A.
Simona & Eden begins in medias res and to the spectator is left the possiblity to imagine the background of the two major charachter’s lives, mostly thanks to their fierce dialogues. Escaped from a foster home, Simona & Eden are trying to reach Eliat, in order to begin a new life.
Using accurate details and references, the short-film menage to make the audience sense the lives, the personalities and the destinies of the two young girls, who are very different one from another.
- Simona and Eden have a different relationship with tecnology, which is essential for one of them. Eden, in fact, needs her phone in order to be connected with the reality surrounding her. Growing up in a foster home and having a calm and submissive personality have generated into her a kind of fear for living into the real world, leading her to isolate herself into the fictional one of social media or into music. Differently from Eden, Simona doesn’t have a cellphone, albeit it could be associated to her status of poverty. The absence of such a device can be read as the lack of need to use tecnology in order to build interpersonal relationships.
- Smoke is also an important detail: Simona needs to smoke in public to affirm her strenght, hiding, between one sigarette and the other, her insecurities. Eden, on the contrary, doesn’t feel the necessity to smoke to prove her determination. But she wants to make Simona happy and, ignoring the real reason why she smokes, Eden looks for Simona’s favourite sigarettes on the edge of the road.
- The differences between the backpacks the two girls are carrying also contribute to differentiate the two main charachters: Eden, who is shy and insecure, has an anonymous logorate backpack, with a unsewn shoulder strap, destroyed by the weight of things inside of it, in the same way as the burden of her existence oppress the owner; Simona loves to be transgressive and let everyone know this element of her personality so she has a lively backpack, with “BAD GIRL” written on it. Her obsessive research for attention hides her fear to be left alone, maybe due to the fact that she was left by her parents.
Music is another essential element : singing and dancing let them have some moments of true freedom. Every song listened during the journey is repetitive and capable of express the sadness hidden into the girls’ hearts and give them an illusion of completeness and happiness.
In spite of all their differences and misunderstandings, the two friends are tied not just by a great friendship, but also by a platonic love: Eden’s jealousy towards Simona seems like the one of a girl in love and hopeful for the feeling to be mutual. This crush seems not be returned by Simona, who appears to prefer the attentions of boys.
After the viewing of the short-movie, the director was willing to answer to some jurors’ questions: here we report the salient points of the debate:
The charachters don’t know what to expect on their jurney. They have very different personalities: What makes Simona want to go on, makes Eden want to run away […] Simona is the leader and Eden goes after her. There’s always one friend who feels more secure, who talks to the guys while there’s one friend who’s left to the side. And when you’re a teenager is a very common situation.
Simona & Eden ends with an open finale, which can be suitable as a prelude for a long film, set after some years and where the results of the two girls’ choises are shown.
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