'Thus speaks Tarām-Kūbi' Wins at Film Festival in Split

14 November 2022

Photo: dalmatinski Portal

Great success for Vanessa Tubiana-Brun and Cécile Michel: their documentary 'Thus speaks Tarām-Kūbi – Assyrian Correspondence' won the award for best film at the 7th International Archaeology Film Festival in Split.

The 7th International Archaeological Film Festival in Split, Croatia, ended on 12 November with a great success for Vanessa Tubiana-Brun and Cécile Michel: Their documentary ‘Thus speaks Tarām-Kūbi’ was awarded best film. According to the jury, the film fascinates both with its scientific (archaeological) discoveries and its artistic (cinematic) achievements. It offers a ‘detective’s story about deciphering and finding letters on clay tablets from the Bronze Age, and an innovative narrative approach’ in which the story is told in the intimate language of the author of the letters themselves.

The documentary tells the story of Tarām-Kūbi, a woman who lived in ancient Mesopotamia some 4000 years ago. Her correspondence, for example with her travelling husband, which is preserved on cuneiform tablets, enables Assyriologists like Cécile Michel to reconstruct the living conditions and everyday concerns of the people of that time. However, many of these letters are sealed and thus unreadable. At CSMC, Cécile Michel is therefore, among other things, working with physicist Christian Schroer, who has developed a high-performance tomograph to look inside the sealed cuneiform envelopes.

‘Thus speaks Tarām-Kūbi’ was released in French in 2020 and has won several awards already. Since this year, the documentary is also available in English and can be watched in full on the website of CNRS Images.

This year, 21 films from eight countries were shown during the official competition programme of the Archaeological Film Festival. The second prize went to the film ‘Ladies and Princes of Prehistory’ by Pauline Costa and Camille Gouby-Monin. Third place went to David Geoffroy with ‘People from the Dunes’. The special trophy is a replica of the sculpture ‘King of Croatia’ by Vasko Lipovac, the original of which is kept in the Museum of Croatian Archaeological Monuments.