Valley of Exile – Review

This film was screened at the 21st annual Tallgrass Film Festival.

There are often no easy answers. It’s a complicated way to live, perilous and frightening, and often comes with no answers at all. The first feature-length narrative film from Iranian-American director Anna Fahr contains only hints and never a concrete answer. The question?

What the hell is this family going to do?

Syrian refugees are a topic of particular interest to Fahr, who has previously made short films Migrant Mothers of Syria and My Life in Limbo. Her particular focus was not on the war, though it is impossible to discuss her topic of focus without touching on it, but rather on the refugees that fled the Syrian War to find a modicum of safety in Lebanon. Her shorts provide a harrowing peek into the lives of human beings who suffer in the name of that safety.

We open with sisters Rima (Maria Hassan) and Nour (Hala Hosni), the former a pregnant adult and the latter on the edge of adulthood. Rima’s husband, Firas (Moe Lattouf), has been left behind awaiting the money he is owed from a previous employer while the sisters take buses and trudge along gravel roads looking for a place to stay. Their walk ends at a refugee camp, taken in by Haifa (Najwa Kandakji) and her niece Shirin (a magnetic Joy Hallak). While the Lebanese soldiers mostly despise their charges, young Hassan (Sajed Amer) has taken a shine to Shirin and Nour sees this as an opportunity to hunt down information on her insurgent brother, Amin (Mohamad Yassine). The sisters’ paths lead them and the entire refugee camp into danger as one grows closer to crowning and the other to the truth.

Thanks to some of the interesting camera work from Mark Khalife and Fahr’s tight, gripping script the film flies high and toes boundaries I would have never guessed. Resembling the world of Oliver Wood on the Bourne films, Khalife utilizes a free-held camera to keep things somewhere between tense and terrifying. There’s a shudder to everything, one that makes each still moment feel like the sisters are standing on a razor’s edge held over oblivion.

Some true depth is brought out by the character of Khaled (Michel Hourani), a Lebanese engineer who assists with illegal additions to the tents to turn them into ramshackle houses and who takes a shine to Rima in her time of need. His own tragic history (and meddling mother) leave viewers flabbergasted with a what-if that we won’t ever see the answer to. True sorrow brings people together in the oddest ways and Fahr refuses to shy away from that reality.

While the film spends its time on love and loss, lies and betrayal, and shades of grey that demand a spark of shame in many audiences the truth is much harder to deal with. There is no happy ending and there never was but that’s life. Each happy ending is not followed by closing credits but with a continuation of life. Fahr’s entire point is focusing on that continuation and the ways in which we make it harder for others. Valley of Exile is a beautiful-looking, heartbreaking film that will stick with you long after you’ve stepped away from it and into the light.