The awards results for the 70th London Film Festival came as a surprise, when two of the four main awards went to two documentaries; One of them was the festival's official competition award, which was crowned by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa's film "Imperium", based entirely on the recovery of archival material about the former Soviet Union without interfering in its reconstruction. The second was for a Jordanian documentary film that represents its director's first directorial experience, which is the film "Concrete Land" by Asmahan Bakirat.
Thus, the festival gave a special impact to documentary cinema, and indeed to a specific type of it known as the observational documentary film, which is based on the principle of monitoring the real event, recording it, and presenting it as it is without the director’s intervention in its tracks, explanation, or comment on it. Rather, the task of interpretation and conclusion is left to the viewer.
It is as if the festival's jury committees were keen for reality to triumph over fiction, especially the main competition jury, which was headed by American director and producer Sam Pollard (who in turn is a documentary director who won the International Documentary Association Award).
The truth is that this is not a strange tradition for British cinema, which was known for its penchant for realism and the traditions of the ancient British documentary film school with its founder, John Grierson, whose name is named in the festival’s documentary competition, and which was crowned by Jordanian-Palestinian director Asmahan Bakirat this year.
The film “Concrete Land”, which has a second title “Tiaha”, provides monitoring and documentation of the daily life of a Palestinian Bedouin family displaced from Beersheba who lives on the outskirts of the city of Amman, struggling to survive and preserve their traditions in an environment that is changing very rapidly, and faces the encroachment of urban expansion as the city expands at the expense of agricultural or pastoral spaces and the pristine environment surrounding it. Hence the title of the film, Concrete Land.
These spatial and social transformations are reflected in the lives of three generations of the Najjar family that the film depicts, and it is keen to monitor their different paths, starting with the first generation, represented by the grandfather, who is of African origin, for whom nature is his main refuge, as he spends most of his time grazing, and the grandmother, who lives in similar harmony with nature, and with her animals, specifically her spoiled sheep, which she calls “Badriya,” and with whom the grandmother’s relationship occupied an area of the film. It was this relationship that caught the attention of the director and her friend Luban Maraka, who is the screenwriter and later editor of the film, when they saw the grandmother’s relationship with her by chance while they were on a walk to get to know her friend and begin that long relationship that led to the film, as the film’s director says.
Then comes the second generation, represented by the son, who works as a truck driver, and his wife, and the third generation, represented by their children. The film focuses on the child Iman, whose growth over the years since she was 9 years old until she became a young teenager trying to integrate into modern life and following foreign songs and dances (Korean in particular) via the Internet and the TikTok app like the rest of her generation.
Thus, we see that these shifts in place and changes in the environment are reflected in the psychological reality of the characters, who differ in their approaches to reality. Between the grandfather and grandmother who are immersed in nature, the son immersed in work and trying to secure stability for his family, his wife who wants to have a new baby despite all the harsh reality surrounding them, and the generation of grandchildren, represented by Faith and her attempt to integrate into modern life.
The film is full of small details from the daily life of this family. It leaves reality to speak and unfold in all its simplicity without charting a strict narrative path. The director says she filmed more than 400 hours of this family's daily life. So you immerse yourself in those daily details and postpone facing the tragic moment that always looms at the end with deportation and the unknown future of the family.
This focus on small details reveals the extent of this family’s ability to face the harsh reality surrounding it and discover its ways to persevere, survive, and live in dignity, amidst its challenges and rapid transformations. We see it, in the midst of everything it faces, surrounding itself with a fence of conviction, wit, and sarcasm at times, in addition to that complete integration with the nature that surrounds it.
The film maker seems to be seeking to stop time and immortalize this passion for life and belonging to nature, and that conviction that makes the family live in joy, relative happiness, and nobility despite not owning anything, postponing consideration of the tragic fate that awaits them.
This nobility is evident before us in small, spontaneous details: such as the grandmother’s attempt to save an old tree from the excavator that seeks to uproot it in order to replant it in another place, or in her special emotional relationship with her pampered sheep, who takes care of her, decorates her, and combs her wool, and the grandfather’s relationship with nature, to which he belongs completely, and in which the film reaches its climax, with his insistence on living in the open under an open sky; Then, with his death, the family is forced to leave and the son is forced to sell their sheep in preparation for moving to a new place in the city.
We also see it in the family’s care for the cleanliness and grooming of its children and sending them to school, and in the father’s relationship with them, as he plays with stuffed dolls imitating TV cartoon characters, and this fatherhood extends to the children themselves, as we see in the scene of the little girl Iman refusing to take money she does not need.
The director clarifies this vision when she says in a press interview: “I want people to realize that Bedouin life does not mean poverty. If you see people living in a tent, this does not necessarily mean that they are poor. This is a fact that is difficult for many to comprehend; historically, Bedouins were not poor, but rather chose this lifestyle because they wanted it. It was not imposed on them, and modernity is not necessarily always better; it is not like that.”
One of the central issues in the film remains monitoring the threat facing this relationship with nature in a changing environment, and the side effects of urban expansion on it. The encroachment of concrete blocks for villas and housing that have begun to be built in the area imposes a new reality that leaves a tragic impact on the life of this self-sufficient family. The new residents confront the family with aggression and demand that the municipality deport them and their animals, whose presence in the area bothers them.
Let us confront that tragic moment that the director kept trying to postpone through a non-stop flow of small details and moments of celebration of life, which are reflected in the ending scene when the family is crammed into an old, dilapidated truck making its way towards one of the densely populated complexes in the city.
Amidst all the tragedy that surrounds the ending, Bakirat does not fail to depict that overflowing desire for life and attachment to hope. The family has a new baby, and the grandmother’s spoiled sheep is hidden to prevent it from being sold and the family takes it with her, and the girls are busy filming fireworks and a music concert from afar. This hope is reflected by the director in the look of a young girl tinged with sadness and a sense of loss who aspires to rebel against this eternal wandering facing her family.
“Concrete Land” is a poor film in its production, but it is extremely rich in the sincerity of its dealing with reality and its intimacy in dealing with it. It is a film overflowing with love for its photographic material, and perhaps the most prominent characteristic of the film director that led her to win this important award, and by the way, she is also the film’s photographer, is her love for the material that she depicts and her integration with it. This turned into a kind of coexistence with the family she photographed, until she and her cameras that document her diaries became an integral part of her, and not just an external, observing eye.
This love with which the director portrays her subject was reflected in her extreme care for the aesthetics of her cinematic image and the choice of camera angles with which she depicts her characters in small places such as the tent in which they live, ensuring that their most precise emotions are captured. This is what the jury (which was headed by the Indian director Sandhya Suri) noted in its evaluation statement for the film as “a depiction (a portrait of a family’s life) characterized by the beauty of observation, and accomplished with perfection and confidence. Through image composition, sound design, and scene construction, And most importantly, the deep, trusting relationship with the film’s characters, the director has proven herself deserving of the Grierson Award.”
The statement added: “It takes superior cinematic skill and great artistic maturity to make the viewer feel very close to each member of this exceptional family, across generations and in a completely different part of the world; however, the warmth we feel towards each one of them is very deep,” according to the committee’s statement.
This cohesion between the film director and her subject that she depicts is the main point of strength and distinction in the film. The director does not place a separation between herself and the subject of her film, but rather sees herself as an essential part of it, and the form of a life path for her. It is what led her to work in cinema, as she was not a professional film director, but rather came to cinema through training in a film workshop, and what she presented in it was a short film entitled “Badriya” that formed the first nucleus of this film later, as she spent years searching for the subject of her film. in the family; Starting with the grandmother and her sheep, and passing through the image of the father or the child, Iman, and her life, before finally turning into the life of the entire family.
