In this part of the world, Djinns are associated with the genie from Aladdin’s magic lamp. Not so in Jordan, where a father killed his four-year-old daughter because he thought she was possessed by a demon. Starting with this case, the director Dalia Al Kury researches the (scandalous) progress of the trial and delves deeper and deeper into a parallel world where exorcism and folk belief are still practiced along with the Quran. In the process she enters into the collective unconscious of a society ruled by taboos. She demonstrates that Djinns are found mainly where there is non-conformity – in terms of moral ideas, codes of behaviour or mental disorders. The film is saved from becoming a treatise by the filmmaker’s open and visually rich approach to the subject, which reveals obscure aspects and the naivety of the believers. Conversations with her mother also show how closely religion, ritual and the desire for spirituality are interwoven – not just in the Arab world.

Cornelia Klauß

A thieving magpie stole the clown’s hat. When he tries to get it back he makes a discovery …

They and all the others will continue to inspire life, Dina Naser writes at the end of her film about three children of war in Syria. They grow up in a refugee camp in Jordan: Marwa is the eldest, then there’s her sister Ayah and finally Mahmoud, the youngest. They have seven other siblings, but the family was torn apart when one brother in Syria no longer wanted to serve in the army and thus the dictator Assad. Marwa is the heroine of the film. She will soon be grown-up or at least considered almost of marriageable age by her parents. Her mother and father now make sure she doesn’t go out any more. But she already has a boyfriend.

Dina Naser follows the three children’s fate and everyday life over an extended period of time, starting in 2014. The filmmaker even hands the camera temporarily over to her protagonists – for the time when she can’t be with them. This can and should be compared to the situation of Palestinian refugees in 1948, among them Dina Naser’s father, whose experiences are referenced by the director. This opens up a larger context for this story which is profoundly and universally human but at the same time linked closely to the complicated Syria and Middle East conflict by its wealth of detail.

Bert Rebhandl