Inside life
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Inside life |
| Original title | Insyriated |
| Country of production | Belgium , France , Lebanon |
| original language | Arabic |
| Publishing year | 2017 |
| length | 85 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Philippe Van Leeuw |
| script | Philippe Van Leeuw |
| production |
Guillaume Malandrin , Serge Zeitoun |
| music | Jean-Luc Fafchamps |
| camera | Virginie Surdej |
| cut | Gladys Joujou |
| occupation | |
| |
Interior (original title: Insyriated , alternative festival title: In Syria ) is a feature film by Philippe Van Leeuw from the year 2017 . The Belgian - French - Lebanese co-production is based on an original screenplay by Van Leeuw. The chamber play-like drama depicts 24 hours in the life of Syrian civilians who were trapped together in an apartment in Damascus during the civil war .
The film premiered on February 11, 2017 as part of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival in the Panorama section , where it won the audience award. A German theatrical release took place on June 22, 2017.
action
Damascus, during the civil war: The wife and mother Oum Yazan is waiting with her old father-in-law Abou Monzer, their children Yara, Aliya and Yazan and the Filipino housekeeper Delhani in their apartment on the 2nd floor of an apartment building. The bombed-out young neighbor family Samir and Halima with their baby as well as Yara's friend Kareem, who was surprised by heavy fighting during a visit and is waiting for the situation, also found a short-term admission. Oum Yazan's husband has left and is expected that evening. The windows of the spacious apartment facing the courtyard remain covered for fear of snipers, while detonations or helicopter noises can be heard from a distance. The water supply has collapsed and it is dangerous to go outside to fetch new water. Electricity, internet and telephone networks only work temporarily.
Samir and Halima plan to escape to Lebanon that evening with the help of a French journalist. When Samir left the house to prepare for the morning, he was shot by a sniper and remained motionless in the courtyard. The terrified and religious Delhani, who misses her son, involuntarily witnesses the incident and tells Oum Yazan. She thinks it wiser not to tell Halima about it for the time being and instructs Delhani to keep her knowledge to himself. Despite the war, the resolute Oum Yazan tries to keep up with everyday family life. They eat together, Oum Yazan's father-in-law teaches grandson Yazan, while their eldest daughter Yara flirts with Kareem.
When it comes to heavy bomb explosions in the district, events roll over. Two men gain access to the barricaded apartment via the balcony. They had previously been harshly rejected by the energetic Oum Yazan through the peephole. Halima and her baby do not manage to barricade themselves in the kitchen with the others. She lies to the men who are looking for stolen property that there would only be an old woman and her son behind the locked door. She is then raped by the older of the two, while Oum Yazan, Delhani, Abou Monzer, Yara, Aliya, Kareem and Yazan involuntarily become ear-witnesses of the crime. The violated Halima wrests her rapist from promising to protect the house and its inhabitants.
After the two men have left the apartment, the community takes care of the shocked Halima, who later retreats to her room with her baby. Delhani urges Oum Yazan to tell Halima about the fate of her husband, about which she has forbidden spoken to Abou Monzer. When Halima learns of Samir's fate late in the evening, she suffers a nervous breakdown. She opens the curtains to attract the attention of the snipers and can only be calmed with great difficulty. Halima then sets out to recover Samir's body. Kareem and Yara help her with this. It turns out that Samir is still alive but is badly wounded from a deep gunshot wound in the back. Friends of Oum Yazan's husband are notified, and they will take the severely injured unconscious man away. Halima and her baby are to follow the next evening. The friends cannot say anything about the whereabouts of Oum Yazan's husband. They advise her to leave the apartment, but Oum Yazan wants to stay.
During the night when the telephone network was working again for a short time, Oum Yazan received a belated, cryptic voice message from her husband. The next morning, when his son has still not returned, Abou Monzer stands in front of the curtained window, smoking, and is close to tears.
background
Inner Life is the second feature film by Belgian Philippe Van Leeuw , who mainly works as a cameraman . He made his debut as a director and screenwriter in 2009 with Rwanda - The Day God Walked Away , which reported on the genocide in Rwanda from the perspective of a woman . Van Leeuw had already started writing the script for Inner Life in 2013. He was inspired by a real story from Aleppo : “One day in December 2012 a friend from Damascus told me that her father had been locked up in his apartment in Aleppo for three weeks - without a telephone connection or other means of communication because the city was so bombed was very destroyed. I saw this lonely man in front of me locked in his own home, and also imagined others like him who are struggling to survive every day ”, says Van Leeuw.
Van Leeuw described the film project as "[...] driven by a certain urgency." For Inner Life, from the beginning he decided on the family's apartment as the only place of action and a time span of 24 hours. Also, he didn't want to show condemnation or an imposed moral stance in his film. When writing the script, Van Leeuw was advised by the exiled Syrian filmmakers Hala Mohammad and Meyar Al-Roumi and inspired by their own knowledge of the region. Regarding the build-up of tension in inner life , the filmmaker referred to David Fincher's thriller Panic Room (2002). Van Leeuw said he did not use tricks and special effects, but was only interested in “[...] the unadorned view of the drama of the situation in which the characters are.” “As in my last film, The Day God Walked Away , I tried very hard to avoid any indulgence or voyeurism in my approach to violence. [...] The violent acts portrayed in the film are more acoustic in nature than visual. I always try to express something visually instead of using dialogue to get things across. In my opinion, faces and bodies should tell everything, ”says Van Leeuw, who named the filmmaker Jacques Tourneur as another point of reference .
With the exception of the Israeli-Arab actress Hiam Abbass , Diamand Abou Abboud and the French-born Juliette Navis, all other roles were cast with Syrian actors. Navis had no language skills in Arabic and therefore had to learn her text phonetically. Since it was not possible to shoot in Syria, Interior Life was filmed in Beirut , Lebanon . Some of the actors who lived in Syria had to stay in Lebanon throughout the shoot as it was too dangerous to commute. The children playing in the film are all of Syrian or semi-Syrian descent. Their families came to Lebanon as refugees.
Hiam Abbass says he felt obliged to take on the role of Oum Yazan and praised the script. The story reminded her of the Palestine War (1947–1949). “It struck a nerve precisely because of my own story and the story of my ancestors. It wasn't very difficult for me to immediately identify with these people, with this story and these characters, and be able to give him what I had of my emotional baggage. "
reception
After the Berlinale premiere, Christiane Peitz ( Der Tagesspiegel ) praised Inner Life as a claustrophobic chamber play in her short review and rated the performance of leading actress Hiam Abbass as great. Claudia Schwartz ( Neue Zürcher Zeitung ) commented more differently on the film. She praised the performance of the actors in the film, which ignores all political discussions and which, as a "humanistic manifesto", is "honest work". But inside life is just as problematic as last year's Berlinale winner Sea Fire . In addition to a lack of political instinct, the film "in its moral fury for truth does not develop any distance from its own proceedings". Schwartz criticized the long portrayal of Halima's rape scene, which, as a crime scene episode, would be taken from the television program as too “realistic” and would provoke audience indignation. “Cinema does not create political signs by illustrating issues that are in the air, as“ Insyriated ”shows, but when it succeeds in setting a counterpoint to the zeitgeist, where it triggers empathy and thinks the problem further than the general feeling and opinion. ", So Schwartz, who feared that with so much moral claim, a critical debate could fail. Anja Seeliger ( pearl diver ) recommended looking at life inside , even if Philippe Van Leeuw found "no new settings or even a new cinematic language for this situation". The film reminds us that there are no right decisions in war: “Even not doing something is a decision that costs victims. You can discuss a lot after this film, but you don't feel like moralizing at all, ”says Seeliger.
Jonathan Romney (Screen International) was reminded of the films Panic Room by David Fincher , Sieranevada by Cristi Puiu and Das Fenster zum Hof by Alfred Hitchcock , which were also staged like a chamber play . He praised the acting ensemble, in particular Hiam Abbass and Diamand Abou Abboud. As Oum Yazan, Abbass would call up “one of her most powerful depictions to date”. The film is a “tightly constructed, intense claustrophobic drama” and offers “a sometimes nerve-wracking portrayal of what happens when conflicts hit home.” Romney also pointed out the complex tone design of Paul Heymans and Alex Goosse. Deborah Young ( The Hollywood Reporter ) reviewed the film as a "sobering, fast-paced study of a Syrian household under siege," whose closed society situation, due to the claustrophobic space and limited time frame, heightened the drama. Young also highly praised Abbass and Abou Abboud's performance and pointed out that Van Leeuw deliberately avoided close-ups of the actors. Jay Weissberg ( Variety ) , like Claudia Schwartz, was bothered by the “well-meaning, but roughly melodramatic story”. Van Leeuw's direction is "more fluid" than his dialogue and Weissberg referred, among other things, to the farewell scene at the beginning between Halima and Samir. The critic specifically cited the scene in which the family barricaded themselves in the kitchen under Oum Yazan's command while Halima was raped. “The problem with the film isn't that Oum Yazan seems to have lost her altruism , but that the script justifiably creates this moment to enforce the kind of moral dilemma typically dealt with in high school ethics classes will. ”, says Weissberg, who instead considered Delhani to be the roundest character in the film. The tragedy in Inner Life is reduced to "cheap TV tricks". Weissberg praised the "fluid" camera work by Virginie Surdej , while the minimal film music by Jean-Luc Fafchamps was "unfortunately kitschy and badly used".
Awards
At the 67th Berlinale, Innen Leben won the Panorama Audience Award for the best feature film and the Europa Cinemas label as the best European film in the section. The European cinema network gives financial incentives to show the film in European cinemas. That same year, the film was shown at the Seattle International Film Festival , where Philippe Van Leeuw took third place for best director. Inner Life also made it onto the shortlist for the European Film Awards 2017 .
Web links
- Official German website
- Profile at berlinale.de
- Inner life in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ "In Syria". Accessed May 10, 2017. https://www.siff.net/festival/in-syria .
- ↑ “LIVING INSIDE | The official website for the film ”. Accessed May 10, 2017. http://innenleben-film.de/#home .
- ↑ “By far the most important film of the Berlinale | hpd ". Accessed February 14, 2017. https://hpd.de/artikel/verbindungen-wichtigste-film-berlinale-14085 .
- ↑ Haasis, Bernd: Frei im Hirn . In: Stuttgarter Nachrichten , February 13, 2017, p. 12.
- ↑ a b c d e "LIFE INSIDE - About the film | The official website for the film ”. Accessed May 16, 2017. http://innenleben-film.de/#film .
- ↑ a b c “Palestinian Actress Hiam Abbbas On Insyriated and the Trump Travel Ban | Variety ”. Accessed February 14, 2017. http://variety.com/2017/film/global/palestinian-actress-hiam-abbbas-on-insyriated-and-why-the-first-victims-of-trump-travel-ban- are-americans-1201984864 / .
- ↑ "Arab Films at the Berlinale: The War Within Me - Culture - Tagesspiegel". Accessed February 14, 2017. http://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/arabische-filme-auf-der-berlinale-der-krieg-in-mir/19371748.html .
- ^ "Berlinale - Berlin Film Festival:" Insyriated "and" Kaygi "show an uncertain present - NZZ Feuilleton". Accessed February 14, 2017. https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/berlinale-filmfestspiele-berlin-insyriated-und-kaygi-haben-eine-unsichere-gegenwart-ld.145344 .
- ↑ "Film review of Insyriated by Philippe Van Leeuw in the Panorama Berlinale 2017 - Berlinale Blog - Out of breath - Perlentaucher". Accessed February 14, 2017. https://www.perlentaucher.de/berlinale-blog/2017/02/12/filmkritik-zu-insyriated-von-philippe-van-leeuw-im-panorama-berlinale-2017.html? highlight = insyriated .
- ↑ “'Insyriated': Berlin Review | Reviews | Screen ". Accessed February 14, 2017. http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/insyriated-berlin-review/5114925.article .
- ↑ "'Insyriated': Film Review | Berlin 2017 ". The Hollywood Reporter. Accessed February 14, 2017. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/insyriated-review-975359 .
- ↑ Weissberg, Jay, and Jay Weissberg. "Berlin Film Review: 'Insyriated'". Variety, February 12, 2017. http://variety.com/2017/film/reviews/insyriated-review-1201985699/ .
- ↑ "The Panorama Audience Awards go to Insyriated and I Am Not Your Negro". Accessed February 18, 2017. Archive link ( Memento of the original from February 19, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ "Insyriated - Awards - IMDb". Accessed September 21, 2017. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6497898/awards?ref_=tt_awd .
