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BARZAKH

By Laila ABBAS

PALESTINE FILM INSTITUTE - as PROMO / CONS

Drama - Development 2019

Mariam & Kawthar need to hide the death of their father. If his death is declared, other inheritors are entitled to bigger shares. To hide his death, they need to hide his body.

- Year of production
- 2019
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- PALESTINE
- Languages
- ARABIC
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 80 mn
- Director(s)
- Laila ABBAS
- Writer(s)
- Laila ABBAS
- Producer(s)
- Laila ABBAS (Young Oak Productions)
- Synopsis
- Mariam and Kawthar find their father dead in his old desolate house on the outskirts of a Palestinian village. His death wasn’t expected and they figure it might have been caused by leaving the coal furnace on throughout the night without ventilation. Mariam seems less interested in the cause of his death and she wants to start the funeral arrangements right away. She thinks their father is a cheap man who died in a cheap way.
  
  Her attitude towards the dead father angers Kawthar who thinks it’s outrageous to speak ill of the dead.
  But when Mariam discovers that their father has 268,000$ in his bank account, she’s less eager to send him to the hospital where they officially declare his death. The problem with the money in his account is that it can’t get withdrawn in one go. They can only withdraw it 3,000$ per day using his ATM card. This will require 89 days for them to get it all out. If his death becomes public, that money will be frozen and then divided according to inheritance laws.
  
  Mariam and Kawthar have two brothers who live in America. Those brothers have left years ago and got completely out of touch. One of them is not reachable at all. The other stopped returning their calls after Mariam asked him to contribute more to their old father’s expenses. According to inheritance laws, these two brothers get double what the sisters get because they’re men. Mariam has no intention of letting this happen. She comes up with a plan but she needs to get her sister on board.
  
  After initial resistance and some fighting, Kawthar sees that her sister has a point. Mariam is hoping that this money can help her get rid of her husband whom she hates. She’s been wanting to get a divorce for several years but her only option was to come back to live with her father in this wretched house. Now it’s her chance to be independent. As for Kawthar who works in a hair salon and makes very little money, this could be her chance to buy a house and even run a hair salon of her own.
  
  Mariam comes up with a rather solid plan to hide the death of the father. But what they need to take care of tonight is his body. They decide to bury him somewhere in the mountains. But before they do, Kawthar insists that they owe it to him to do all the rituals the other dead fathers usually get. They bathe him and cleanse him and perform the prayer people do for dead people. By doing all that, they feel that they have cleansed themselves, strengthened the bond between them and made their peace with the dead father.
  While heading to the burial place that they picked, nature interferes. With the morning light, what they planned all night doesn’t seem doable any more. And their attempts to be liberated from their current lives hit a dead end.