Director's Biograpghy
Sara Elias is a filmmaker, film professor, and PhD holder in cinema therapy from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. She graduated from German University with a BA in Media Design, her bachelor film project (My laver, 2011) was premiered at Freiburg film forum. She then completed her MA in film production from University of Bristol. In 2014, she founded Maseera studio, producing social documentaries and fiction films that have been broadcasted on several platforms, and won at the Bridge of Peace film festival, France.
Her last feature film, (METANOIA, 2024), has won over 25 international awards. Sara is passionate about telling stories of hope, resurrection, self-healing and social change on film and to create moments on screen that can have a resonating effect on those who experience them.
Film Treatment
Logline:
Three outcast Arab women, a writer, a chef and a Syrian refugee meet during their culinary work in a failing restaurant. Their intersected life exposes their hidden traumas, and helps them retrieve from their inner scars. They eventually lose the restaurant, but they learn to release their pains and have a renewed outlook on life.
Film Synopsis:
Meta-noia (beyond fear) is Ph.D. research film in cinema therapy, it is an experimental docu-drama film inspired by a hybrid of true events. The film portrays the process of post-traumatic growth of three outcast Arab women, in attempt to perform as a catalyst for a therapeutic watching experience. The film unfolds its trauma narratives from the micro suffering of interpersonal trauma and isolation into the macro post war trauma narratives, family diaspora and the nexus between them.
The film portrays three exiled Arab women: a writer, a cook, and a Syrian refugee who meet while working at a failing restaurant. Their entangled lives reveal their buried traumas and aid in their recovery from inner scars. They finally lose the restaurant, but they learn to let go of their old fears and pains and get a new perspective on life.
Director Statement:
‘Metanoia’ is a trauma fiction film, based on a hybrid of true stories of real characters and real events compiled in a fictionalized story. The film utilizes the post trauma survival journeys of three Arab women as a mechanism of testimony, salvation and working through trauma. Drawing on Cathy Caruth’s quote that: ‘it is not only the moment of the event, but of the passing out of it that is traumatic; the survival itself, can be a crisis’ (Caruth, 1995 p. 9).
Hence, the film focuses on the aftermath life of these characters, their journey of undoing and redoing of self, depicting their process of ‘Metanoia’ which (is an ancient Greek word that) refers to ‘the psychotic breakdown and the subsequent psychological re-building or healing’. Hence, by presenting a trauma survival journey the film aims to perform as a therapeutic blueprint for other traumatized women.
Though the film is designated to work through the traumas of Arab women, women worldwide can still identify with the characters’ journeys of retrieval, as the characters’ traumas feature the basic three types of trauma encountered universally (acute trauma-the loss of a loved one, chronic trauma- sexual assault, complex trauma- abandonment of caregiver). Therefore, identifying with the film characters can help afflicted women to develop their ego strength to realize their anchor trauma, recognize their traumatic patterns and reconnect to their inner recourses.
As a prevalent feature in trauma survivors (the film characters), that the reality of their trauma experience lies outside the realm of their knowable self, so that they live in cycles of pain and escapism without associating its interrelated cause and effect. For this reason, the film does not have a single narrator or framing any character’s consciousness, to allow the spectator to witness and accompany the unfurling cognitive and emotional journey of each character, where a performative process of ‘working through’ traumas can be entailed by both the character and the spectator.
The therapeutic theme of the film is based on Susan Sontag’s approach “Regarding the pain of others”, in which she described it as a “transnational practice of listening and regarding to the pain of others with the hope of individual and national healing” (Sontag, 2003 p.67). Similarly, the witnessing act between the film characters and their gradual disclosure to each others traumas, will trigger their drive to help and connect and integrally revise their sense of victimhood.
The characters’ trauma is exposed and screened in a nonlinear plot, in a reversed process known as the ‘Backstory wounds’, where the film confronts the viewer with fragments of the character’s past into his present to inform the viewer with the character’s past traumatic events, so the viewer will gradually structuralize and comprehend the whole narrative of the character’s trauma from the web of flashbacks screened. The film uses postmodernist techniques to create a blend of formal and abstract visual devices to create a subjectivity effect on the narrative structure and characterization. Visual collage and juxtaposition of images are deployed to perform as the character’s visual beat, flashbacks and PTSD symptom.
Film drivers and characterization:
The film is derived from the recurring socio-political pressures in the Arab world, along with my personal encounters post the Egyptian revolution, to suddenly be living in an exile in my own country post the diaspora of family and friends. Whereas, in my own journey of ‘metanoia’, my deadlocks, short triumphs, relapses and constantly re-empowering my faith and gratitude, I personally sensed a need for a testimony of healing amidst the countless tales of trauma in the film and media discourses.
Character drivers:
a) Mariam’s portrait (is composed from three shared life accounts) represents the stereotypical social oppressions ensued on Arab women without a male guardian (whether a father or a husband), as they are often regarded as incomplete, deformed or shameful spinsters.
b) Jean’s portrait represents the majority of sexual assault victims in the Arab region, who are often stigmatized and expelled from their communities, which tend to blame and execute the victim of sexual assault instead of serving a conversation of self care. With the rising percentages of sexual assaults publicly and domestically, no laws or policies have been suggested yet to protect Arab women from gendered violence, so jean’s portrait aims to empower assaulted women to reframe their negative events and help them envision their lives beyond the shadows of their past.
c) Dima’s story is inspired from Doaa Elzamel, who is a real survival story from the mass murder shipwreck incident of September 2014, as she was one amongst the 10 survivors of originally 500 passengers on board, after floating helplessly for days in the sea, Doaa who observed the drowning of her fiancé was only able to pull through, by her sense of responsibility towards the two infants she has been entrusted to save. Doaa was accredited for her bravery for saving young Massa, and her story was accounted by the UNHCR chief spokesperson Melissa Fleming in her book “ A hope more powerful than the sea”. A corresponding film from Steven Spielberg is in development to narrate her story from Syria, Egypt to Sweden. Yet, as I focus in this film on the aftermath period of the traumatic event, I cemented Dima’s story out of other similar accounts, to depict the phase of her unspeakability of trauma where the spectator gets to witness and structuralize her backstory through her intrusive flashbacks, hyper arousal and haunting images.
The film’s theoretical concepts and story structure:
The film applies Ann Kaplan’s concept of an ‘ethics of witnessing’, the narrative and aesthetic devices she proposed in her book Trauma Culture: The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature (2005) to establish the mode of witnessing for the spectator, in which the viewer is enlisted as a listener, and through which a process of self-reflexivity can be unlocked. The witnessing mode as explained by Kaplan is an ‘unusual, anti-narrative process of the narration that is itself transformative in inviting the viewer to be at once there emotionally, but to also keep a cognitive distance and awareness denied to the victim by the traumatic process’ (Kaplan, 2004 p. 9-10). Therefore, the film is structured in the backstory wound plot , where the character’s behaviors and suffering appear absurd and mysteries in the beginning. The film also avoids the use of direct narration or the framing of the character’s consciousness and replaces it by the use of flashbacks, haunting images, and the juxtaposition of sound and images . Thereby, the spectator can accompany the character’s bereavement and the working through of trauma and relive the character’s reenactments. Each character adds a new layer of suffering and prospects to be witnessed by both the spectator and the film character. This ‘double witnessing’ process gradually empowers the survivor ‘to gain critical distance from their trauma’ and differentiate between their past, their present and their future’ (La Capra, 1995, p 8).
Character breakdown:
Mariam: ( means bitter) is a single Egyptian playwright, who lives alone in Egypt after her mother’s immigration and her father’s abandonment fifteen years ago. She depicts the complex (developmental) trauma, which is ensued by her father’s abandonment as a child. Mariam grew up lacking the male figure in her paternalistic society. Therefore, she develops ‘a fragmented sense of self and a contorted personality’ (Herman, 1992). Her mind responds in the flight trauma response; she is often dissociated from her reality by fantasies and daydreaming of another reality. Nevertheless, Mariam’s sense of abandonment causes her to be in a constantly hyper-vigilant state, in expectancy of a harmful situation. Her brain is wired to the state of emergency and loss. Mariam’s sequence exhibits the post-traumatic symptoms of acting out of trauma, the black hole of isolation, self-depreciation, emotional hijacking, intrusive reenactments of painful situations and words, social anxiety, and augmented fears that often interfere with her present, and dictate her future. Mariam’s sense of abandonment has been translated into her psyche as self-abandonment, a sense of rootless, co-dependency and attachment to a toxic male savior.
Jean: (42 years) is a Lebanese chef who works in the restaurant of Mariam’s uncle, Jean portrays the chronic trauma ensued by her sexually marriage. Her father forced her into an early marriage when she was seventeen and when she escaped it, her family forced her into exile in Egypt because of her violent reactions and post-traumatic repercussions . Unlike Mariam who is fixated in fantasies, Jean is living in the present moment; she had her life reduced to the goal of survival, with a foreshortened sense of future. Although she managed to forgive her perpetrators, she is still living under the shadows of her past, and since she cannot easily dissociate, she finds comfort by enslaving herself in the kitchen and excessive alcohol intake.
Dima: (23 years) a portrait of Syrian refugee. She is a survivor of the acute trauma ensued by the loss of a loved one in an accident. Dima is a silent and mysterious character, she portrays the voluntarily muteness, the ‘psychic numbing’ or the freeze trauma response. Therefore, Dima’s memories lack the verbal narrative and context’ ; she gradually remembers moments of her accident, in a scattered ‘vivid sensations and images’ that reenacts in ‘a heightened reality’ in her mind (Laub, 1995). Therefore, the spectator comprehends Dima’s backstory and trauma narrative through her intrusive flashbacks, hyper arousal and haunting images. Dima’s flashbacks reveal that despite her fears of the sea and inability to swim, she followed her fiancé’s plan to be smuggled out of Syria on a ship to Italy. The ship capsized and she lost her fiancé after he had saved her life. Dima was only able to pull through by the presence of her sister Massa (who accompanies her in the film narrative). However, the last scene reveals that Massa is not Dima’s biological sister, but an unaccompanied child Dima has saved during the shipwreck, Dima’s final flashback shows Massa’s mother entrusting Dima to save her before she drowns.
Massa: (4 years old) is a portrait of the ‘lost child’, she lost her family on the shipwreck, and got saved by Dima. Massa is also a transitional figure that bridges the characters’ damaged past and the rebuilding of their future . Thereby, she is central to their self -reconstruction, bereavement and healing. Massa also depicts the wounded inner child of the characters, as they all share the family wound and social alienation. She also depicts their first state of unconsciousness (belated response or latency- temporary amnesia) when they were not yet aware of the losses nor the trauma ensued on them. Nevertheless, Massa’s presence helps each character to reconnect with their inner child wound. She refreshes Mariam’s longing for her father, and reminds Jean of her hopes to build a family, she helps tame her anger bursts, and reconnect her with the outer world again. Massa mostly helps Dima to hold on to life rather than drowning in her own grief and loss. Massa in her final scene is also a depiction of intergenerational trauma and the legacy of trauma that is yet to be confronted and acknowledged.
