OPEN CALLS: Green Film Lab - Budapest, TFL Co-Production Fund & TFL Next - Feature Film
Working at the Keroman fishing port as a filleter, Wael is exiled in Lorient with his daughter Reem for six years, following the arrest of his wife Sousan, an actress and activist during the Syrian revolution. After six years of struggle, he has just obtained the name of the prison in which she is detained and negotiates her release. Whereas Wael experiences Sousan's arrival as a liberation, Reem remains on her guard toward this woman she no longer knows but who has become a symbol for all the Syrian people. In Lorient, Sousan tries to adapt herself to this family life so expected by Wael. But her quotidian experience is the antithesis of the burning ideals she has carried for years, confronting her with loss of meaning and status. Little by little, a gap widens with Wael between their different experiences in exile, their ideals and their expectations. While Sousan commits politically, Wael hides the heartbreak of feeling her getting away and tries by all means to bring her back to him. When she is offered a position in the Syrian Interim Government in Turkey, Sousan, torn, finally renounces and refuses the proposal. Having come to understand her mother’s inherent strength but seeing that she is fading away, Reem encourages Wael to come out of denial and let Sousan go.
It is the story of an impossible love between a man, who has searched his wife for years and must resolve to let her go, and a woman, marked in her body and soul by a fight which is the only vital impulse she has left. The journey of this couple takes place in a particular context: the exile of many opponents following the Syrian revolution. Far from being the subject of the film, it forcefully reveals these characters whose paths have diverged. It confronts them in their deepest questionings, revealing incompatible expectations and choices. For some time now, I have been interested in exiled families through my projects, but it has always been from an intimate angle. And if the context of the Syrian revolution is intimately important to me, what interests me is to highlight the unspoken of this family separation. Within a tight narrative and a sober mise en scene, I would like to explore their different points of view, because each of them has their reasons. In this regard, films like Mike Leight's All or Nothing, or Asghar Farhadi's A Separation are such an inspiration for its viewpoint structure.
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