Conversation with the Sea (Hiwar ma’ albahr), directed by Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan and shot by Lorenzo Casadio Vannucci CCS, was presented in the Venice Spotlight section at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.
Set in Jerusalem, the film tells the story of Kamal, a Palestinian man in his sixties who is ordered by an Israeli court to pay a substantial social security debt attributed to his son Wael. The young man, however, is believed to have drowned in the Red Sea twenty years earlier. As there is no official document certifying his death, Kamal embarks on a search that forces him to confront the mystery of his son’s disappearance, the unresolved conflicts within his family and the wounds of the past.
Lorenzo Casadio Vannucci CCS’s cinematography accompanies the protagonist on his journey through the streets of Jerusalem, capturing the city’s energy and complexity while interweaving the realism of the story with more dreamlike, suspended elements.
Starring Kamel El Basha, Amer Hlehel, Bahira Ablassi and Maria Zreik, Conversation with the Sea is written by Muayad and Rami Alayan. The 112-minute film is a co-production between Palestine, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
