“Fiction allows me to express what is happening”: Syrian filmmaker Soudade Kaadan on Venice title ‘Nezouh’

Samer al-Masri and Kinda Alloush, both well-known Syrian actors, play a husband and wife in conflict about whether to stay in their besieged hometown of Damascus or flee and become refugees. Watching on is their 14-year-old daughter, played by newcomer Hala Zein, whose world quite literally opens up when a nearby missile rips a hole in the roof and her neighbour, played by fellow newcomer Nizar Alani, throws down a rope.

Kaadan, who was born in France but moved to Syria as a child, started writing the script in 2013. She was inspired by a photo of a bomb-damaged house in Damascus where the light was shining in through the various points of exposure. “I wanted to talk about how this would change the interior and dynamic of the house, the masculine and the feminine,” she explains. “At the time, everyone was talking about the bombing and the fighting, but I wanted to talk about this internal thing.”

When civil war erupted in Syria circa 2011, Kaadan says she did not have the usual reaction of other filmmakers in the country. While many flocked passionately to documentary-making, Kaadan, who was already a working documentarian, made the switch to fiction films instead. “For me, filmmaking is not only passion, it is also rational. It was too much for me at that moment and I just felt I could express what’s happening better in fiction.”

As well as The Day I Lost My Shadow, which follows a mother heading into a besieged area of Damascus in search of a gas cylinder, Kaadan also wrote and directed the short film Aziza, about a Syrian refugee teaching his wife to drive, which enjoyed a favourable run on the festival circuit and picked up the 2019 Sundance jury prize.

In August 2020, the director moved to London from Lebanon, where she had been living since 2012, and met with Pinewood Pictures’ former managing director Yu-Fai Suen whose production company Berkeley Media Group later went on to co-produce Nezouh with Kaadan’s KAF Productions. Suen helped secure the BFI and Film4 funding which makes up the majority of the film’s financing — the rest comes from French producer Marc Bordure, who also produces with his company Ex Nihilo, in addition to US’ Starlight Collective and Cinereach.

Attention to detail

Recreating a war-torn Damascus may sound like no easy feat but Kaadan struck gold when she discovered the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which had been destroyed by negligence over a long period of time. The 49-day shoot took place almost entirely on location in Turkey and Turkish production designer Ozman Oscan carried out extensive research to ensure authenticity.

“It wasn’t enough for him that it was destroyed. It should look like it was destroyed from a bombing of a certain bomb,” Kaadan says of Ozcan, who also did the art direction for 2018 Horizons jury prize winner The Announcement. “Even the house, it’s very Damascus-ian in detail. Every detail is Damascus-ian, the food, the décor, the accessories, the painting, everything. He really did amazing work.

“Because it’s about my country, and because it’s about something real, if it’s not very convincing, it will show for the audience. As a Syrian, for me, it was very important that in every moment you feel it. I felt like anything could touch the film if there wasn’t real, authentic work in every detail.”

Learning the ropes

Zein, who had never acted before, was plucked out of a restaurant in Turkey, where the casting director spotted her and invited her to audition. Kaadan then carried out a month of rehearsals with Zein that consisted of acting and improvisation in the morning followed by gym and rope exercises in the afternoon.

“We had a safety team and a harness standing by standing by in case she couldn’t [climb the rope] but every time she did it,” Kaadan says, in reference to the multiple scenes in which Zein’s character must climb up a rope to reach the roof. “We kept laughing because we were paying all this money for a team of people we didn’t need.” 

Following its Venice premiere Nezouh is screening at the BFI London Film Festival in October. Kaadan explains the film’s title, an Arabic word meaning “the displacement of souls and people”, will not be translated into English. “I wanted to show that this human movement is also about changing life dynamics, changing as a human being,” Kaadan says. “I wanted to show the range of emotion you can feel with this family, that it looks like any family.”

Kaadan hopes her next venture will shift away from the Syrian conflict. “It’s very easy to limit and box us, as filmmakers from Syria, as only doing subjects about war. I’d like to do something different.”

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