By: Yomna Walid
It is not only a film you watch. It runs for 76 minutes, but it took ten years to finish. It is about life, loss, and acceptance. After winning around 15 awards and screening at more than 50 Arab and international film festivals, Egyptian director Namir Abdel Messeeh's Life After Siham has succeeded in turning personal grief into cinematic art. Lost after his mother's death, Abdel Messeeh made a decision: to introduce that loss to the world.
The film unfolds in the aftermath of Siham's passing. Namir refused to accept that she was gone forever. From his point of view, his mother is immortal. And so he embarks on a journey to discover his family's history between Egypt and France, following in the footsteps of Chahine's cinema to tell a story filled with love, memory, and the pain of belonging.
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EVqNoqevdVw" width="560" height="314" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>&nbsp;
In Abdel Messeeh's own words about the film's Egyptian release: "After travelling to Cannes, touring the world, and receiving over 15 awards, my film finally arrives where it all began. Seeing this story released in Egyptian theatres is much more than a professional milestone. It is the fulfilment of a promise. It is the profound feeling of coming full circle. Through cinema, I am bringing my parents back home. This is the story of a family that had to leave, but which, through the magic of film, finally returns to the land of its ancestors. This film is Egyptian in its soul, in its breath, and in its heart."
NileFM spoke exclusively with Namir Abdel Messeeh to talk about milestones, grief, and how a film can become therapy, opening up feelings in its audience that they never realised they had not yet healed from.
How did your passion for filming and documenting moments from your life begin, and when did it develop into a full project?
I discovered it when a friend of mine had a camera. I borrowed it once and started filming, and I found that I really enjoyed it. At first, I was filming my friends; then, without realising it, I found myself filming my family a lot. But the goal was never to make a film with them. I filmed them because I love holding onto life's moments, like memories. I had this kind of virus in me where I loved being hidden behind the camera. When I film, I feel invisible. I could go anywhere. It gave me the courage to film strangers on the street. I was shy and embarrassed to talk to anyone in the street, but holding a camera changed that feeling completely. The camera gave me the courage of being hidden while also giving me the strength to hold my ground somewhere. That gradually shifted into filming my family, until a specific project came along where I was funded to make a film about my father. From that point, I transitioned from just filming to actually making films about my family; my father, my mother and my family. That film led me to make The Virgin, the Copts and Me, and after my mother passed away, it led to Life After Siham. The challenge with that film was how to film my mother when she was no longer there. I wanted to hold onto her, but there was nothing left to film. The chairs were empty, the room was empty, my father was sitting alone. So we started filming, and I was searching for a way to capture Siham. That is what created the film.
<a href="https://ibb.co/kVF5tnxV"><img src="https://i.ibb.co/BHRc9DtH/1.png" alt="1" border="0" /></a>&nbsp;
While filming Life After Siham, was it the son or the director who was in control? And how did you resolve the tension between the two?
The director was more present than the son. The director actually saved the son. The director is removed from emotion because he is looking at feelings through the lens of a film. So I was more of a director than a son throughout the whole process. And it was the film itself, the act of making it, that allowed me to feel the emotions of the son that I could not feel while filming. The filming was a kind of therapy, something that protected me from the pain. The camera creates a distance between you and reality, and I needed that distance because the reality was too painful.
You incorporated scenes from Youssef Chahine's films. Were you influenced by his personal approach to his own work the way you brought yourself into yours?
Yes, what I admired was that he put himself in his own films. It takes courage to do that, because a director is supposed to stay hidden behind the camera. To step in front of it is not easy at all. You can do it in different ways, as an actor playing different roles, but he was not doing that. He was talking about himself. Even when he took a role in Cairo Station, it was a role no other actor would have wanted to play. He put himself in difficult positions. He also talked about his relationship with his family. That courage impressed me. It is not necessarily about putting your physical body in the film. What matters is seeing that the director is putting himself at risk, showing that he is not just filming others while keeping himself out of it. He was saying: I am filming myself, I am sharing something about who I am. That is what I admired.
<a href="https://ibb.co/CThRYYR"><img src="https://i.ibb.co/YqpH11H/2.png" alt="2" border="0" /></a>&nbsp;
In the film, you wished that life were a film we could reshoot. If you had the ability to reshoot and change just one thing in your life, what would it be?
There are many things, but the one that troubles me most is that when my daughter turns 18, we will not be able to celebrate with her grandmother. I always used to tell my mother when she was sick, "Get better, Mama, so you can sit and watch the children grow up." She passed away when my daughter was five and my son was two. The thought that we could have all celebrated together, that she could have been there when they got married or turned twenty, is something that will only ever exist in my imagination. I picture what my mother's reaction would have been seeing Matilda. That is the thing that will not happen, and I will live with that, but it will happen in my imagination in its own way.
If your mother could watch the film today, what do you think she would say after seeing it?
She would ask me why I told our story. Who told you to tell my story?
The film documents a journey spanning over ten years of your life, yet the audience experiences it in an hour and sixteen minutes. What did it feel like to see those ten years condensed in front of you on screen?
I do not think about the length of the film as much as I think about its impact. There are films that live inside us. I chose specific moments from my life to tell a story and convey a certain feeling. I knew that feeling would stay with certain people for a long time and affect their lives, the way certain films have affected mine. That is what gives me the energy to keep going. Whether a film takes two years or ten to make does not matter as much, though six months would certainly be preferable. What matters most is that its impact on people is powerful.
<a href="https://ibb.co/Nn96hFYT"><img src="https://i.ibb.co/VpgWyLBw/3.png" alt="3" border="0" /></a>&nbsp;
"Life After Siham" achieved great success and won numerous awards at both international and Arab film festivals. What was the most significant milestone in that awards journey for you?
That it is now being shown publicly in Egypt. And the biggest award for me was simply finishing the film, because completing something that difficult, that long in the making, meant everything. When it was done, I told the editor and the producer that this was the final version, and I felt like I had won every award in the world. Everything that came after was a bonus, something beautiful. But the smile I felt when the film was screened and I saw that we had actually finished it, that was the real achievement. And, of course, screening it in Egypt and in cinemas.
<a href="https://ibb.co/NBcQV8g"><img src="https://i.ibb.co/gKkHj5b/Copy-of-Copy-of-Red-and-Orange-Photocentric-Modern-Newsroom-Instagram-Post.png" alt="Copy-of-Copy-of-Red-and-Orange-Photocentric-Modern-Newsroom-Instagram-Post" border="0" /></a>&nbsp;
What message or feeling do you hope audiences carry with them when they leave the film?
People told me they wanted to watch it a second and third time. People told me thank you for the film, which is something rare, something we are not used to seeing, and something we need. Someone told me it encouraged them after five years of working on their own film and gave them the courage to keep going and feel that what they want to make matters. The messages are different for everyone depending on where they are in their own lives. But the film reached people's hearts.
<a href="https://ibb.co/1YpYM21z"><img src="https://i.ibb.co/Gf1f9PyH/5.png" alt="5" border="0" /></a>
Photo Credit: Namir Abdel Messeeh&rsquo;s official page

On Air Now

Non-Stop Music

You May like

Schedule

Non-Stop Music