PODCAST | Chiara Nicoletti interviews Philippe Van Leeuw, director of the film Insyriated.
Philippe Van Leeuw’s new film has just shaken the Panorama’ section of the 67th Berlinale as it represents the horror of Syria’s word by following a family trapped in their own apartment. Its title is Insyriated and its main actress is Hiam Abbass. The idea of the film came to Van Leuw in 2013 and from that time, the war hasn’t stopped and it’s still on so the film keeps being actual. Besides Hiam Abbass, Diamand Abou Abboud and Juliette Navis, all the other actors in the film are from Syria and on their experience Van Leeuw based some of the happenings in the film. The kitchen is the place where they try to hide, we don’t see or can’t see what happens outside but the uncertainty of what future will bring them is written on their faces, their panting, their trying to have a normal life despite the cruelty and killings outside.
Insyriated: trapped inside her house in a city under siege, Oum Yazan, mother of three, turned her flat into a safe harbor for her family and neighbors, trying to protect them from the war outside. When bombs threaten to destroy the building, when snipers turn the courtyards into deadly zones, and burglars break in to claim their dreadful bounties, maintaining the thin balance of routine inside the walls becomes a matter of life and death.
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