A young nurse starts a new assignment in a small isolated village in the farthest reaches of Turkey, a place that seems asleep in an endless winter. A thick layer of snow covers the souls as well as the lands. But under the snow, unspeakable secrets hibernate.
After their father is conscripted during the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia, three sisters begin a Hi8 video diary in their countryside home. They film each other putting on make-up, picking cherries, playing party games, getting into fights and helping their mother cook. This fragile, intimate world is perhaps their only shelter from the reality of bombings, sirens and war.
Through an intimate reconstruction of an important phone call, When The Phone Rang investigates dislocation and the nature of remembering. In the protagonist's eleven year old mind the phone call erases her entire country, history and identity and hides its existence in books, films and memories of those born before 1995.
