Lebanon, Arabic - 90 min
Feature Narrative Film
TOTAL BUDGET
US $800,000
CONFIRMED FINANCING
US $10,000
Primary Contact
nadine.salib84@gmail.com
+20 1222170949
In a village atop the mountain, those who remember that water was once for everyone are declared mad.
In a faraway land hidden in the mountains and removed from time, lives Yam, a young mute girl, with her father Abra and her mother Tiara. After Tiara dies from unknown reasons, Yam has to partake in the ritual of erasing all the memory of her dead mother’s existence in seven days in order to be freed from all mournful spirits. But Yam, who is numbed like others in her community, is haunted by the lullaby her mother used to sing to her before she died. The lullaby tells the story of a mute boy, who was saved by a bird that leads him to a faraway river. Yam breaks the law when she allows remembrance to kindle her soul, uncovering a great secret concealed by the Guardians of the Water Well, and accordingly jeopardizes her time to come in the village.
This film is a meditation on trauma, unbearable emotions, social norms and displacement. The idea started coming through at a time when my country was mired in an endless social and economic upheaval. I tried to imagine how a person’s life would look like if one lived in a world unencumbered by any chains of emotions or heaviness of memories, just an emotionally blinded person. This question became the premise of the film. I chose the story to be told through a young girl’s eyes to make it sound like a bedtime story told through the summation of childhood imaginings. I am not intending to make a genre film, the overall structure of the film will be depending mainly on visuals and sonic scaping rather than informative dialogues. I intend to use Syriac as the spoken language of the film, since Syriac was a universal lingua-franca for centuries; every-day spoken Arabic in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt has very heavy traces of Syriac.
I believe using a language as such will add an allegorical layer to the sonic atmosphere of the film and will help in establishing this fictional village. This language is currently associated with minorities and ethnic groups who are being migrated out of their lands, people from a forgotten time. For me one of the notable elements of dystopia is the normalization of death, violence and despair. In the past years I’ve been noticing how people react immunely to obscene scenes of bloodshed or massacres; how they easily cope with such news has to do with normalizing loss, which is a main theme in the film.
Ultimately, I would like to make a film that parades the possibilities that presume the rhythm of life involves more than birth, marriage, death.
At times when the world is dark and confused, storytellers across the arts must take it upon themselves to help interpret our feelings, amplify our concerns, and shed light on the possibility of transformation. As a producer who gets pitched a broad spectrum of projects from emerging filmmakers, it is not often that a great story with the right elements comes my way. Yam & I is just that.
The world created by the bold voice of Nadine Salib in Yam & I journeys through trauma, fear, despair, displacement and mores that imprison, all the while confronting the audience with the state of drought in nature and in human compassion. Through the power of imagination and dream states, the characters compel us along toward resilience, endurance and hopefulness. Nadine's choice of Syriac as the spoken language of the film lends to the authenticity of this fantastical world, offering yet another layer of originality to her singular vision.
This is a remarkable and timely project I am proud to support and help bring to the screen. We are seeking partners who wish to be part of the creation of powerful entertainment, and who will bring exceptional contributions to the artistic, technical, financial, and distributional stages of the project.
As a producer and executive producer of award-winning, commercially released fiction features, I have been part of the evolution of Jordan’s contemporary film movement since 2003, when we launched the Royal Film Commission.
There I led the capacity building department in identifying and cultivating industry skill sets and nurturing a community of workers and backers. I then went on to produce my first feature, Captain Abu Raed, the film that marks the comeback of Jordanian cinema after fifty years of absence. In 2008, Captain Abu Raed won the Sundance Audience Award for world cinema, was released in theatres and VOD platforms, and went on to win numerous awards. The next feature in 2012, When Monaliza Smiled, was an audience favorite which played in local theatres for nine weeks, their longest running film. And in 2014, Theeb premiered in the Horizons section of the Venice International Film Festival winning for best director, among a long list of awards ever since. Theeb went off to represent Jordan at the 88th Academy Awards, nominated in the Best Foreign Language category, another first for Jordan. Between 2015 and 2017 I worked with the Doha Film Institute, leading the production track of the Qatari Film Fund. A funded, managed, mentored program for emerging Qatari directors. As of 2018, I am developing storylines for commissioned writers and directors.