Sara Fattahi’s CHAOS wins the Altered States competition at the Mar del Plata Film Festival ex-aequo with the film Casanovagen by Luise Donschen.”The director left her native country but took the war with her.”, observes the jury in its particularly
accurate statement.
The jury statement:
"After making Coma in 2016 – a film that depicted her family’s everyday life during the bombardment of Damascus – the director
left her native country but took the war with her. Chaos is an experiment in cinematographic snapshots featuring a montage of three Syrian women currently living in different parts
of the world as they talk about the violence and fear they suffered every day and how the climate of relentless attack still
haunts them. Eschewing war footage and blood-soaked photography, Fattahi nonetheless lays bare both their pain and her own,
vividly portraying still-raw wounds. The documentary is based on the accounts of the exiles and especially their silences,
which powerfully and poetically convey the fact that although they are now far from the field of battle, peace still eludes
them. The painful memories linger on, regardless of language or distance."
