Dreams and silence

Omar Al-Qattan & 52' — 1991

Ahlam fi Faragh (Dreams and silence) is conceived as a parallel montage that takes us from the daily life of a Palestinian refugee living in Jordan, to the discourse of a religious senator who belongs to a mystical school of thought. It tries to identify the contradictions between modern Islamic political thought and the everyday problems this refugee has to face. While the military and political conflicts continue between the West and the Arab-Muslim world, and while Arab political movements are renewing their ideological arguments following the Gulf war, the film tries to replace these conflicts and arguments within their more natural framework, that of everyday reality, in order to avoid any sterile absraction. Thus it confronts the political and social thought of the senator with the problems this refugee woman faces: economic precarity, limited education, broken dreams of national liberation, limitations on her personal and social freedom as a woman… While distancing itself from the obscurantist ideas of Islamic fundamentalism, and from violence of the conflicts between the West and Islam, the film tries to defend a more human point-of-view, that can pose the problems of the Middle East in a new perspective, even though it was shot at the height of the Gulf War, and finished when the Gulf War had taken its horrible toll of suffering and destruction in the region.

Belgium

Production : Sourat Films
Coproduction : FR3, CBA
With the support of the Centre du cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles

Réalisation
Omar Al-Qattan
Scenario
Omar Al-Qattan
DOP
Raymond Fromont
Sound
Riccardo Castro
Image editor
Greg Harris
Mix
Phillipe Baudhuin
Image Format
16mm
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