08/09/2006

Syrian-born directors Hala Alabdalla Yakoub and Ammar Al Beik are in attendance at the end of this year's Venice Film Festival to present I Am the One Who Brings Flowers to Her Own Grave in the Horizons sidebar section.

Based on the stories of several Syrian women – some of whom stayed in the country and others that moved to France – this documentary is simultaneously an essay on fragmented memories of a country and a tribute to poetry as a source of hope.

Shot in black and white, with the video camera often placed too close to people (capturing their face expressions and hidden nostalgias), Alabdalla Yakoub – who also captures her own life, relatives and strong need to make a film – did not seem to want to make a typical social documentary but rather allows a flow of emotions to express themselves freely, as if filming a personal diary. The result is a reservoir of personal thoughts, sometimes captivating, sometimes too hermetic or intimate for the audience to identify with.

This low budget documentary was produced by the directors themselves with the support of Les Films d'Ici (France). “For us, doing this film was a challenge. We didn’t want to wait for financing. We wanted to be free, and that freedom allowed us to speak about love and sex the way we did. These themes are still taboo in Syria. It was our own way of overcoming the limitations of filmmaking in Syria”, concluded Al Beik.