Even in peacetime, borders are liminal zones that toy with identity, but as we know only too well in recent years, during periods of conflict they become super-charged sites fraught with the push-and-pull of desperate lives in the balance. The Golan Heights is a more unusual border space than most, controlled by Israel yet populated by Syrians who are stuck in limbo, helplessly watching the nightmare in Syria from across the militarized fence while chafing at the occupation – physically safe at home, their souls are crushed, but escaping to Syria means dictatorship, risking lives and giving up their land. This is the context of Ameer Fakher Eldin’s moodily poignant debut The Stranger, which debuted in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori and is Palestine’s strong 2022 Oscar submission.
The title of course tips its hat to Albert Camus and the novelist’s evocation of a prolonged existentialist crisis in which alienation from one’s society forms a key element, yet the plot owes little to the Algerian-set book. It’s a far more Levantine tale, told in quiet, slow rhythms that evoke the in-between state of the Golan, where time’s slow passing is accompanied by the distant sounds of rockets exploding in the nearby Syrian hills. For its mise-en-scène alone, The Stranger is an impressive calling card for both Fakher Eldin and rising cinematographer Niklas Lindschau, whose studied, perfectly composed imagery makes each frame feel like it could be lifted for use in a photography exhibition designed to conjure a mood teetering on the edge of hopelessness. While the script gives short shrift to the one female character, sympathetic yet one-dimensional in her inexplicable, Penelope-like patience for the flawed man she loves, overall the film impresses with its lingering melancholy and visuals bearing a certain kindship to those of Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
As bomb flashes light the distant horizon outside their bedroom window, Layla (Amal Kais) practically begs her husband Adnan (the terrific Ashraf Barhoum) to leave the Golan and move, move anywhere but here. Yet Adnan is stuck in a well of depression and drink, his earlier promise when he studied medicine in Russia now a taunting source of crushed potential. He tends the family’s orchards, living alongside his parents in a relationship so glacial that his father Kasim (Mohammad Bakri, superb in his brief screen time) removes him from his will: “He never met my expectations,” he tells the surprised sheikh recording his testimony, “not a single day in his life.”
Adnan is hobbled like his three-legged dog Kozba, only his is an emotional crippling, so paralyzed by the Occupation and Syria’s collapse that he’s become mired in a masochistic cycle of failed expectations. While driving along the border fence, he thinks he sees a wounded man (Ezat Abu Jabal); later that evening he goes with friend Akram (Hitham Omari) and reluctant neighbor Hani (Amer Hlehel) to investigate, pulling the near lifeless body across and taking him to Adnan’s farm shed. It’s a chance to use his interrupted medical knowledge but the act of mercy becomes yet another illustration of wasted potential, reinforcing his lack of a degree once Dr. Nasser (Mahmoud Abu Jazi) is brought in and then made to leave.
The film’s pacing, while slow and deliberate, doesn’t feel stretched, and as it draws to its conclusion Fakher Eldin takes it to poetic heights, bringing together the intense feeling of alienation – “we tried to create some meaning for our existence,” with the emphasis on “tried” – and the essentiality of the land, so crucial in any consideration of occupation. Adnan’s tending of the family orchard is an act of resistance yet it results in his neglecting his wife and young daughter: ironically the fruit of his loins is disregarded for the fruit of the soil despite the sense that the trees themselves are teetering on the edge of life. A cow keeps producing blood in her milk, presumably a sign of the animal’s trauma, but when Adnan opens her pen she too won’t leave; both are creatures stopped in time, unwilling to move yet equally unable to nurture.
Adnan’s is a difficult role, his depression compounded by self-loathing numbed only by alcohol, and yet Barhoum makes him a wrenching antihero, trapped in a physical and mental no-man’s land. The character could so easily be one note, but the actor gets so inside him that Adnan’s potential always lies just below the surface, increasing the sense of a wasted life. It’s a pity the script didn’t give Kais more to work with, but Bakri’s few scenes showcase his Shakespearean screen presence.
Lighting and composition are exquisitely considered and designed to reinforce a sense of time’s stillness, so much so that practically every image feels like it could be framed on its own. Tonalities are muted and diffuse, veiled further by a creeping white fog that practically envelops the unbearably poignant final shot, so rich in association. Sound as well is expertly calibrated.
Director: Ameer Fakher Eldin
Screenplay: Ameer Fakher Eldin
Cast: Ashraf Barhoum, Amal Kais, Mohammad Bakri, Amer Hlehel, Hitham Omari, Mahmoud Abu Jazi, Elham Araf, Cila Abusaleh, Ezat Abu Jabal
Producer: Tony Copti, Jiries Copti, Dorothe Beinemeier
Co-producers: Moayad Dib, Fayçal Hassairi, Anas Azrak, Ahmad Zalabieh
Executive producers: Gwen Wynne, Carol Ann Shine
Cinematography: Niklas Lindschau
Production design: Bashar Hassuneh
Costume design: Hamada Attalah
Editing: Ameer Fakher Eldin
Music: Rami Nakhleh
Sound: Stefan Bück
Production companies: Fresco Films (Palestine), Red Balloon Film (Germany), Metafora Productions (Qatar), in association with Apricot Films
World sales: Intramovies
Venue: Cairo International Film Festival (International Critics’ Week)
In Arabic, Hebrew
112 minutes
