ACF
Asian Cinema Fund
Script Development Fund
2013 Script Development Fund
LIST The Day I Lost My Shadow
| Category | Asian Project |
|---|---|
| Project | The Day I Lost My Shadow |
| Director | Soudade KAADAN |
| Country | Syria |
| Director's Profile | Soudade Kaadan is a Syrian director, born in France. She studied theater criticism in the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Syria and graduated from Saint Joseph University Institut des Etudes Scenique, Audiovisuelles et cinematographiques (IESAV) Lebanon. She directed and produced documentary films for Aljazeera Documentary Channel, UNDP, UNHCR and UNICEF. Her films have screened at several venues nationally and internationally and have received international awards such as: Martine Filippi award- URTI Grand Prix for Author’s Documentaries - Monte Carlo TV festival, The PriMed prize "Mediterranean Art, Heritage and Culture" CMCA and the Muhr Arab Documentary award in Dubai International Film Festival. Currently, she is working on her first feature fiction film. |
- Synopsis
- Syria 2011, between water outages and power cuts, all Sana dreams about is a hot shower. She is not interested in politics. She has a nine years old kid that she needs to take care of, and an absent husband working in Saudi Arabia to support the family. Now she can’t even cook since the country is hit by a Gas crisis. So she takes a day off and goes out searching for a place to buy a gas cylinder. The road to the distributor is still very far away and she has to pass by people who lost their shadows, by graves in gardens, and dead fishes placed in the middle of a room.
- Director's Note
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This film is written in a country where tomorrow is an unimaginable thought. What is tomorrow If you are living under constant bombing? Alternating between the relief to be missed by the falling missiles and the grief imagining it fell on someone else. Tomorrow became a luxury. That’s why the film doesn’t try to predict or talk about the future. It limits itself in three days of Sana’s life, in a precise moment of Damascus history.
I thought at the beginning of 2011 that I will never use metaphors, symbols and poetic images. I took an oath not to go back again to the indirect messages and suggestive cinematographic language that was dominant in Syria for 30 years. After 11 months of “springs”, I discovered that I couldn’t write what we experienced without metaphors, symbols and poetic images. The reason isn’t censorship anymore. A new reality imposes itself on me. War reality.
“The Day I Lost My Shadow” is the story of daily life during wartime. The film alternates between different levels: Reality, dreams, illusions, mirages and nightmares. Sometimes, it mixes all those levels in the same scene. It is the characters′ subjective perspective of the city and History, as if it is a reflection of their inner universe.
- Festivals
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2018 Busan International Film Festival - A Window on Asian Cinema
2018 Venice International film Festival - Orizzonti section
2018 Toronto International Film Festival
2018 BFI London film festiaval
2018 LA Film festival
- Still Cut