Film Archive

Jahr

Land (Film Archive)

International Competition 2022
Filmstill Perhaps What I Fear Does Not Exist
Perhaps What I Fear Does Not Exist
Corine Shawi
Corine Shawi’s father spends four years in various hospitals – a time in which the state of emergency becomes routine. A description of a status quo and a testimony to resignation and renewal.
Filmstill Perhaps What I Fear Does Not Exist

Perhaps What I Fear Does Not Exist

Perhaps What I Fear Does Not Exist
Corine Shawi
International Competition 2022
Documentary Film
Lebanon
2022
73 minutes
Arabic,
French
Subtitles: 
English

Corine Shawi’s father spends four years in hospitals and rehabilitation facilities in Beirut because of sudden paralysis – a time in which the state of emergency becomes routine and filming becomes a strategy: in search of the right balance of closeness and distance, in search of one’s own position in the structure. Shawi sets herself the task of documenting, putting herself in the picture, keeping the family together and at the same time recording movements and changes.

Family life shifts to the sickrooms. The radio plays, the mother smokes countless cigarettes on the balcony, her eyes and fingers graze figures of saints, she attends Holy Mass in the various facilities and shares her worries about an adult son with her husband and daughter. They argue, laugh and sometimes dance around the sickbed. Between the family capsule and drifting through the city – Beirut, night, cemeteries, sensualities –, the filmmaker inserts interview sequences with her siblings, staged on the backseat of a moving car. Attempts to cope and to draw borders, loneliness in company. Brief moments when wishes and projections of mobility are experimentally translated into virtual space – a gauging of possibilities. A touching description of a status quo and a testimony to resignation and renewal.
Djamila Grandits

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Corine Shawi
Cinematographer
Corine Shawi
Editor
Halim Sabbagh, Corine Shawi
Producer
Myriam Sassine, Corine Shawi
Co-Producer
Jana Wehbe
Sound
Lama Sawaya
Score
Joh Dagher
Nominated for: Prize of the Interreligious Jury, FIPRESCI Prize