A middle-class apartment in Damascus. A day like any other. Outside, war is raging. Inside, the mood is dominated by fear. While her father-in-law gradually loses hope and his will to live, Oum Yazan (Hiam Abbass) tries with meagre means to maintain a kind of familiar everyday life. But then her neighbour, who has found shelter with her after his house was bombed, is shot by snipers in the courtyard, the house is shaken by bomb blasts, and sinister figures gain access.
Insyriated – which won the Panorama Audience Award at this year's Berlin Film Festival – is Philippe Van Leeuw's second film after "Le jour où Dieu est parti en voyage" (2009), where he portrayed the genocide in Rwanda through the eyes of a woman on the run. Once again, the renowned Belgian cinematographer is adapting his own screenplay, and once again he focuses on the female experience of war with all its violent and morality-destroying effects. At the same time, the dense chamber play – shot in Beirut – hardly leaves the four walls, which on the one hand represent a familiar comfort-zone, but which on the other hand can't keep out disaster. And the terrible thing is that this disaster has long since become a part of everyday life.
