Al-Sahel al-Mumtani'

Directed by Rania Stephan

A filmic dialogue between exiled Syrian writer Samar Yazbek and the filmmaker that tries to ask vital questions about cinema and literature in the face of war, death and violence. Focusing on the relation between the spoken word, the literary text and the act of listening, the film explores the writer’s work with her own tools: words. As the war intensifies, the dilemma increases: to speak or not to speak becomes a central question in the film. But if the filmed conversations are interrupted, who will tell the story of the voiceless? A pertinent poetic and political testimony of our troubled times.