Few small churches are as precisely conceived as Dominus Flevit. Built on the western flank of the Mount of Olives, facing the walls of the Old City, the Franciscan chapel commemorates the Gospel episode in which Jesus, coming over the ridge, weeps at the sight of Jerusalem. The architect Antonio Barluzzi gave the building the form of a teardrop, with urns at the four corners of the roof, and placed behind the altar a single arched window that frames the Old City, the Dome of the Rock and the domes of the Holy Sepulchre — one of the most reproduced views in Christian iconography of the Holy Land. Excavations on the terrace uncovered an ancient burial ground with rock-cut tombs and ossuaries, and remains of an earlier place of worship with mosaic paving, now visible in the enclosure. The film works the site as a piece of designed emotion: the descent of the path between olive trees, the shift from open landscape to a dim interior, and the moment when the city reappears, framed and reduced to the size of a window. Light changes rapidly here, and the programme follows it from sunrise to dusk.
