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Asmahan is a film poem about the famous Syrian singer of the same name. The film is made up of four parts: love, death, love, and death. Each part follows one of the two songs Asmahan sings in the film which are used as a structural motif throughout. Like her musical notations, every shot is connected to every other shot. Nearly every shot contains Asmahan (she is the only actor in the film who appears to be talking), which is meant to create an obsessive relationship with the image reminding us of the interplay of voyeurism and exhibitionism that makes the actor that we see on the screen dream like, especially when she also sees us. This dream logic suggests that there is a hidden life, which exists through pictures, lurking in even the most superficial and trite of B-films. It is this fragment-like wholeness that is in a sense the structure of the film. As in a dream, Asmahan's actions are accentuated through a number of strategies.
Director
Status
Released
Original Language
EN

A love letter from a young mother to her daughter, the film tells the story of Waad al-Kateab’s life through five years of the uprising in Aleppo, Syria as she falls in love, gets married and gives birth to Sama, all while cataclysmic conflict rises around her. Her camera captures incredible stories of loss, laughter and survival as Waad wrestles with an impossible choice– whether or not to flee the city to protect her daughter’s life, when leaving means abandoning the struggle for freedom for which she has already sacrificed so much.

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