The Hush of Chaos: Pain and Play in Sarah Fattahi's Films on the Syrian War

Authors

  • Dina Georgis University of Toronto

Abstract

Chaos, a 2018 film by Sara Fattahi, a relatively new Syrian filmmaker based in Vienna, offered me an opportunity to pause and to think differently about trauma and memory, a topic that I’ve been writing about for over 20 years. The Syrian war which began in 2011 and continues into the present is not at all represented in graphic or disturbing images of war. Quite the contrary, the camera focuses on the women and their activities at home which are not particularly eventful. The film is slow to move, quiet, and repetitive. The story of the women’s experiences of violence and loss is told in small morsels of the their truth. I would describe the impact of the film to be unnerving. The encounters we witness as viewers offer an opportunity to connect with a range of affects reflecting Sigmund Freud’s originary observations of the psychic states of traumatic experience; namely, the traumatized are either numb to pain and are unable to narrativize their experience and when the wounds find expression, it can feel like they have no power against pain.   

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Published

2022-08-23

How to Cite

Georgis, D. (2022). The Hush of Chaos: Pain and Play in Sarah Fattahi’s Films on the Syrian War. Free Associations, (86). Retrieved from https://freeassociations.org.uk/FA_New/OJS/index.php/fa/article/view/433

Issue

No. 86 (2022)

Section

Cinema On The Couch

License

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