Sayyedat al-Bahr

Incredible fantasy story! The cinematography and visuals were stunning. Scenes were stunningly connected to a story of coming of age from a view of a girl.

There's no store actually, I gave my rating for the footage.

Black and white and brilliant. At times shocking, at times perfectly serene. If you liked The Lighthouse you'll love the heavy lifting the camera does when the dialogue is understandably sparse.

In a remote fishing village, firstborn girls are thrown into the sea and sacrificed to the sirens, in a propitiatory rite that is repeated every full moon.

Hayat is initially rescued by her father, but years later, when his second son is born, he forces her to meet her destiny: she saves herself by managing to get out of the water carrying the body of a mermaid. Thanks to this, she manages, with difficulty, to integrate into the fishing community, transforming herself from victim to hunter: in fact, in a cyclical and paradoxical perpetuation of violence, the girls sacrificed to the sea become the mermaids that are caught in the fishermen's nets.

Hayat is a half-creature: distanced and marginalised by women, she cannot really fit into the world of men; she captures mermaids, but in part she is one herself. Her uniqueness is not motivated, we do not know how she managed to survive, nor how she hunts, yet this is the only element that justifies her emancipation, which is thus given a priori, diminishing the viewer's empathy and understanding.

Scales retains the elements of charm and mystery in the staging of the fairytale-like setting, but the potential effectiveness of the story is weakened by somewhat sketchy developments and a lack of real character development. Thus only its symbolic value remains.

Despite dramaturgical gaps that, in the final third of Shahad Ameen's opera prima, make the final scenes that lead us to its open conclusion somewhat incomprehensible, «Maidens of the Sea» is a work of extraordinary beauty and imponderable effect on the spectator who is willing to contemplate cultural manifestations alien to Western cosmogony.

«Maidens of the Sea» tells how on an island in the Arabian Sea each family must sacrifice a daughter to the mermaids in order to break the drought and preserve life. But it is enough that the tradition breaks with the case of the pre-adolescent Hayat (Hajjar), to call into question the conventions that violate the right to life. With her case, a vicious immolation circuit is revealed, and the right of a woman to govern her body and find her essence is strengthened, regardless of social designs.

I suppose that to fully appreciate the story, we would have to learn more of Muslim societies, but if we could not investigate them, it would be enough to open up to cultures other than the one we know, without measuring them according to ours. Thus, we could appreciate Ameen's film as the exposure of a situation in which women bear the brunt. This is enough for me, even if it does not tell me what happened when Hayat and the adolescent fishermen plunged into the sea and tragedy stroke.

Fortunately, the film's short duration compensates for its observational aesthetic, which provokes an impatient reaction with its long shots and contemplative tempo. In my case, the film reminded me of the relativity of the impressions of time and space, by recalling Jorge Sanjinés' film "The Clandestine Nation", which, seems eternal to mestizo eyes, but not to the gaze of the Aymara community.

A worthy film, which took many years to come to fruition, it reveals a new filmmaker worth following.