The supernatural and the spiritual co-exist alongside flinty social realism in Syrian documentary maker Ehab Tarabieh’s debut fiction feature The Taste of Apples is Red, an underpowered but quietly gripping slow-burn thriller set in the Golan Heights, that long-disputed and heavily occupied border region squeezed between Syria and Israel. Given its location, it is no surprise that cross-border tensions and divided political loyalties are woven into this stark family tragedy. But the meat of the plot mostly draws on the director’s native Druze heritage, a religion which borrows ideas from Islam, Judaism and other faiths, notably a strong belief in reincarnation as a divine mechanism for keeping the core number of believers steady: as one community member dies, another is born.
Largely thanks to its cultural and geographical setting, The Taste of Apples is Red is a fascinating prospect at first, even if Tarabieh dampens some very juicy dramatic material with too much low-voltage naturalism and slow-motion exposition. That said, compellingly intense performances and the curiosity value of seeing a close-knit Druze community depicted on screen should generate niche appeal and festival traction. Following its Toronto premiere September, this insider snapshot of a rarely seen world screens in Thessaloniki this week, with more festival platforms to follow.
Radiating implacable, stone-faced solemnity on screen, Makram J Khoury stars as Sheikh Kamel, a Druze cleric in a remote mountain community in the Golan Heights, on the Israeli side of the Syrian border. We first see him quizzing a young boy who recalls, with eerie calm, the atrocities he committed in his past life as a soldier for Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime. Thus Tarabieh boldly puts the Druze belief in reincarnation front and centre of his narrative in a matter-of-fact manner, laying out how sin and shame are passed down from soul to soul, key concepts that will later become vital to the main plot.
A stoic widower with a sideline as an apple farmer, Kamel is widely respected pillar of his community. But his modest life of calm contemplation and finely balanced moral judgment takes a heavy knock when his long-estranged brother Mustafa (Tarik Kopty) calls at his home late one night, badly injured and pleading for help, having escaped war-torn Syria after decades trapped on the other side of the border. Initially frosty and unwelcoming, for reasons that gradually become clear, Kamel grudgingly concedes that he must show mercy to his wounded sibling. He summons his midwife daughter Salma (Rula Blal) to help nurse Mustafa back to health, but stresses the need for strict secrecy. Apart from the risk of causing lethal tension with snooping, menacing, pro-Assad neighbours like Daud (Suheil Haddad), Kamel has his own personal motives for wanting Mustafa to heal and disappear again as soon as possible, reasons rooted in their dark family history.
The hushed surface calm of The Taste of Apples is Red is deceptive, as this sleepy village story slowly reveals some very grim secrets involving historic sexual assault, incest and infanticide. There are even hints of supernatural folk-horror, notably in a grisly scene involving a bizarre animal attack. Tarabieh could have made much more of these genre-adjacent elements to heighten tension and suspense. He should certainly have added more context and explanation for extraordinary crimes that are presented here as almost mundane everyday events.
With its longstanding blood feuds, family curses and grim reckonings, The Taste of Apples is Red is heavily steeped in film-noir fatalism, a mood accentuated by Anne de Boysson’s sparse, slithering score and the broodingly intense cast of granite-faced actors, who all appear to fully inhabit these haunted, wounded, sickly characters. Indeed, Tarabieh dedicates his film to Kopty, who died in February. His haunting frontier saga leaves us with the sense that The Golan heights is place of bleak beauty, but no country for guilty old men.
Director: Ehab Tarabieh
Screenplay: Ehab Tarabieh, Sol Goodman
Cast: Makram J Khoury, Tarik Kopty, Rula Blal, Suheil Haddad
Cinematography: Yaniv Linton
Editing: Ori Derdikman
Music: Anne de Boysson
Producers: Jonathan Doweck, Sol Goodman
Production company: Anemos Productions (Israel), Match Factory Productions (Germany), RBB (Germany)
World sales: The Match Factory
Venue: Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Meet The Neighbors)
In Arabic
84 minutes
