Director

Leila Al Bayaty

Germany, Belgium, Saudi Arabia | 2023 | 92 min | Arabic, French, English

• Producer Michel Balagué, Julie Freres, Leila Al Bayaty
• Production Company Dérives, Volte Films
• Screenplay Leila Al Bayaty, David Deboudt
• Cinematography Jonathan Bricheux, Leila Al Bayaty, Zoé Nutchey
• Editing Barbara Bossuet, Zoé Nutchey, Leila Al Bayaty
• Sound Nicolas Pommier, Gabor Ripli, Mikaël Barre, Leila Al Bayaty
• Cast Leila Al bayaty, Hana Al Bayaty (Actress), Gaëlle Balthasart, Abdul Albayaty, Simone Albayaty, Dalia Naous
• Contacts

  International Sales: Dérives, julie@derives.be
  

About the Film

“I prefer to sing rather than speak," says Leila, as the scenes of her second feature film are immersed in musical manifestations that only rarely cease, adding intense intimacy and overlapping sadness between the story of an Iraqi father and former Ba'athist who found himself in exile with his wife and daughters in the deep south of France, and the daily life of a talented daughter who lives with a moral and cultural obsession about her identity and roots. She is struck by an internal fear of losing her affection for a man who is drowning in the tragedy of a distant homeland that has been swept away by treacherous wars and criminal sieges, which later drowned it in gratuitous death and general corruption.

This film is a dynamic and interpretive context, where multiple creativities transform its story into a cinematic manifesto about the real and imaginary, about choice and desire, about the past and the present, about migrations and integration. Al Bayaty’s film invokes personal experiences, represented by the details of a serious car accident, which caused her to lose her memory and drown in a long and violent shock, and another objective one that interweaves the story of Iraq with the wounds of a country that is witnessing successive calamities.
In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks in 2015, Leila, embarks on a transformative journey. On the one hand, she is driven to return to her roots and explore the land of her ancestors. On the other hand, she must confront her cultural duality, which leads her to meet ordinary people, experience their lives, and hear their stories in three locations where she belongs: France, Cairo, and Berlin.

Al Bayaty’s film is a construction of a free visual language, featuring her paintings, photographs, and old family footage that is all put together for painful documentation.

Leila stubbornly tries to reach a cinematic catharsis through her art, which we will see in the final shot. Here, Leila chooses to break away from her personal exile, and fearlessly declares her arrival at a definitive conviction without laments, cancellations, or condemnations. She says decisively: "I am starting to understand."

Ziad Khuzai