Vamik’s Room (dir. Molly Castelloe)

Vamik Volkan, the scholar most renowned for bringing psychoanalysis into international diplomacy, exhibits a preternatural calm as he walks onto the stage of various troubled regions of the world. Molly Castelloe’s new documentary, Vamik’s Room, captures some of that palpable calm and the spirit that animates this extraordinary man. The film intercuts interviews with Volkan on his key concepts and archival footage from the various global hotspots where he consulted over three decades. The film has the feeling of a riveting keynote address – one that is both didactic and viscerally engaging. It is not until the end of the film that the meaning of the title is revealed. Vamik’s “room” serves as a metaphor for finding comfort in bitterly divided places and as a touching story about an expression of gratitude to him personally by people rebuilding their shattered lives.

The film opens with the voice of Volkan, identifying himself as a Turkish Cypriot and child of the decades-long conflict that remains stubbornly unresolved in his homeland. Born to Turkish Cypriot parents and then moving to the United States after his medical training in Turkey, Volkan witnessed from abroad the bitter division of Cyprus into Turkish and Greek sections in the 1970s, including the establishment of the “Green Line” by the United Nations as a buffer zone between the Greek and Turkish regions of the island. In the documentary, Volkan shares a memory of seeing on a television screen fleeting images of his mother and sister fleeing from a chaotic scene in the area he left behind in coming to America. The story evokes the haunted states of mind common to many immigrants and refugees from the world’s conflict zones. In this opening scene, the depressive position serves as a motivational force for his life-long commitments and as a vector to the documentary itself.

Yet, except for this opening story, the film is spare with respect to Volkan’s personal history. The documentary is structured around hi