Feature film
حادثة النصف متر
Samir Zikra · 1981
Synopsis
Sobhi is a minor clerk in a Damascus office, from a working-class and conservative background, and women occupy all his thoughts. He wants to rise, to escape narrowness and want, and he is not particular about the price. A young woman he sees takes him one day to a refugee camp, where Palestine and armed struggle are discussed. He listens. All around, the country is marching towards June 1967.
Context
It is drawn from a story by the Egyptian Sabri Moussa, whose title it keeps apart from one word, and the public organisation produced it in Damascus. It takes the viewer back to the sixties, to the moment when social openness and national momentum came apart together. It is the first film from its country to have circulated in Western festivals, thirteen in all, when the organisation sent its films only to Arab events; it brought back from Valencia the bronze medal for best film.
Who it is for
A feature film in Arabic, never released in France. It is necessary to know that the hero is not likeable, that nothing redeems him, and that this is the point.
Prizes and reception
Bronze prize at the Valencia festival in 1984; the first Syrian film to enter the Western festival circuit, where it was shown thirteen times.