2019 · Short Film
Jamil
And Finally, Humanity
Two strangers buried under rubble in Syria — an American and a Syrian, no common language, only darkness between them.
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Credited as — Director · Writer · executive producer (per IMDb)
Synopsis
Steve wakes in total darkness, pinned under the rubble of a collapsed building. Moments later he hears a voice — unfamiliar, in a language he doesn't speak. Khaled has come round too, buried a few metres away, trying to understand what happened and where his daughter Fatme is.
Neither man understands the other. Their conversation is made almost entirely of misunderstandings, and yet over days in the dark they come closer, because they are enduring the same thing. Steve keeps hearing one word — a name: Jamil.
On the other side of the world, war photographer Anja packs her press bag in her home office in Germany while her husband Leo watches her go, again, into the unknown. What passes between them is carried more in looks than in words; the waiting for a first sign of life begins.
By the fifth day the air under the rubble is too dry to speak. The film is dedicated to the photojournalist Anja Niedringhaus, who reported from Yugoslavia, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Libya and Iraq and was shot dead in Afghanistan in 2014.