Sahar سحر
2015 · 14m · Canada
Directed by Alexander Farah
Tones: melancholic, tense
Nadim recounts the night his sister came home at four in the morning and disappeared shortly after. "This is a riveting and revealing domestic drama that foregoes moralizing as it examines a pressing contemporary issue." (tiff.net)
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Everyone wants to know what happened to Sahar, and Farah says 'no'—which is genuinely refreshing, but the interrogation frame feels like the safe way to do it, the formally justified way to dodge the question rather than weaponize ambiguity.
The interrogation structure sits in conversation with decades of unreliable-narrator cinema and plays the cultural specificity not for melodrama but for genuine moral vertigo; that formal restraint—the refusal to resolve—becomes the film's ethical position.
The entire film hinges on one decision: keeping the camera on the interrogator's face instead of cutting to Nadim, which transforms what could've been a sympathetic portrait into something colder and more accusatory—that single grammatical choice is what makes you complicit.
Reviews
Through it ambiguity reigns. The mystery is not solved and the participation of the audience in making assumptions as to this young girl's fate is the source of the film's power.
Festivals
- Toronto International Film Festival 2014
- Festival du Nouveau Cinema 2014
- Vancouver Short Film Festival 2014, Best Director, Best Actor
- Whistler Film Festival 2014
- Yorkton Film Festival 2015, Golden Sheaf Award
- Telefilm Paris' Canadian Cultural Centre Short N' Sweet 2015
- Australia Human Rights Arts & Film Festival 2015
- Reel Health International Short Film Festival 2015
- Cinephilia's Filmmakers to Watch Series (Middle East & North Africa) 2016