Warsha
2022 · 15m · Lebanon, France
Directed by Dania Bdeir
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, provocative
In Beirut, a Syrian migrant construction worker volunteers to operate the most dangerous crane on site; suspended alone above the city, he finds the solitude and freedom to express his innermost fantasies.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Warsha earns its place in the vault on the strength of its extraordinary central conceit — a crane as a theater of selfhood — and a festival record that confirms it has already entered the canon of essential short cinema.
Crane operator as secret drag fantasist above Beirut — Sundance-bait with NFT receipts, and the "NFT collection" link in the description is genuinely a tell. The premise is striking. The packaging makes me distrust the maker's instincts.
A Syrian migrant on Beirut's most dangerous crane finding it as a private stage for self-expression — Bdeir locates queerness and freedom in the most exposed, vertiginous space imaginable, and the inversion of work-site-as-sanctuary lands. Hassan Aqqoul's performance reportedly carries the whole vertical.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2022, Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction
- 95th Academy Awards 2023, Shortlisted