A Call at Night
2009 · 11m · Palestinian Territories
Directed by Basma
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A girl from Gaza is betrayed by a fiancé and forced by her family to leave; after he rapes her in protest of the family's interference, she is left to face the blame and stigma a rape survivor endures from family and community.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the rage, the defiance—instead Basma goes inward, which is braver and weirder; a film about sexual violence that refuses catharsis or easy moral positioning, just the suffocating weight of complicity and silence.
A formally restrained study in social tragedy that inherits the lineage of Kiarostami and early Haneke—the restraint itself becomes the form, every unshown moment a deliberate choice that deepens the portrait of institutional cruelty.
The film's power lives in a single recurring shot: the girl's face in profile, mouth slightly open, never quite speaking—Basma's refusal to let us hear her voice until the moment it actually breaks is the entire film.