El-Gouna: Syrian filmmaker Soudade Kaadan’s fiction debut, “The Day I Lost My Shadow,” explores the horrors of the internecine strife in her country, filtered through a simple story of a mother’s desire to give her son a hot meal.
Partly folklore and partly magic realism, based on the idea that those who lose their shadows lose their souls, the director weaves a disturbing narrative of disruption, disappointment and distress. She was rewarded with the Lion of the Future award for best debut feature at the Venice Film Festival this month.
Guiding us through some of the most tension-ridden situations imaginable, as the mother walks through forests, dodges sniper fire and hides from trigger-happy rebels fighting government forces, Kaadan conveys most profoundly how such bloody wars can rob people of their souls, if not their lives.
The first 15 minutes give a fair idea of what to expect. Sana (Sawsan Erchied), a pharmacist, rushes home from work, encountering hostile security agents and a funeral along the way, in a race against time to beat water rationing. She has to finish her laundry before the water runs out, and make a meal for her son, Khalil (Ahmad Morhaf Al-Ali). Unfortunately, not only is the power cut off, but the cooking gas runs out. Sana’s trials and tribulations begin to multiply after she leaves the relative safety of her home in search of a gas canister.
While the film is effective at portraying the angst of a mother concerned about the son she has left alone at home
and her desperation to get back to him, it is not visually compelling enough to draw us into the sheer magnitude
of the tragedy. In addition, two supporting characters,
Jalal (Samer Ismael) and Reem (Reham Al-Kassar), who choose to go with Sana, are sketchily written.
Overall, there is a sense of dissatisfaction over this depiction of a scenario as grave as what Kaadan sets out to present.
A dissatisfying portrait of life in the shadow of the Syrian war
A dissatisfying portrait of life in the shadow of the Syrian war
- Sana’s trials and tribulations begin to multiply after she leaves the relative safety of her home in search of a gas canister
Lady Gaga opens up about new film
- I was dragging my piano around New York City, banging down doors and I really believed in myself,” Gaga told Reuters Television at a red carpet event in London
LONDON: Lady Gaga’s performance as an aspiring singer who makes it big in “A Star is Born” might seem to be modeled on her own rise to fame, but Gaga says nothing could be further from the truth.
In her first movie role, the New York-born musician plays a struggling singer called Ally.
“When I decided that I really wanted to go for it as a musician, as a singer, as a songwriter when I was 19, I hit the ground running. I was dragging my piano around New York City, banging down doors and I really believed in myself,” Gaga told Reuters Television at a red carpet event in London.
“Ally is not that way. Ally has completely given up on herself. She is in her 30s, she is jaded by the music industry, having people telling her she is not beautiful enough, that she could never make it,” she said.
