Ziad Bakri and Maria Zreik in Zain Duraie’s ‘Give Up the Ghost’
One of the hottest button issues for a modern woman concerns her ability to have a child. Depending on which society you are born into, it ranges from being a duty to a God-given right, with all shades of grey in between.
In her haunting, beautifully shot (by Benoît Chamaillard) and perfectly sound designed (by Israel Bañuelos) short film ‘Give Up the Ghost’, Jordanian filmmaker Zain Duraie explores the consequences on a marriage around the ability or inability to have a child.
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In a world where most of us compete to be noticed, Benedetta Barzini wants to disappear. But before the former model, slash journalist, slash women’s rights activist goes quietly into that horizon rowing her wooden boat, or climbing through the woods backpack in tow, her son Beniamino Barrese wants to film her for all to see. And to remember her always. Or, as he says off camera at the start of his stunning documentary ‘The Disappearance of My Mother’ — “I was not ready to let her go.”
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Let me preface by writing that I tend to be sold right away on a film that features an exceptional woman as its central heroine. When that woman is a real life figure, still going strong and advocating both women’s rights as well as nature’s preservation, well the film immediately drives up to the top position of my favorite films. More on such a film, ‘The Woman Who Loves Giraffes’ in a minute. First bear with me and my mini trip down memory lane.
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Jean Whitehorse in a still from Lorna Tucker’s ‘Amá’
When I spoke to Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini in Venice, I asked why he’d made ‘What You Gonna Do When the World’s On Fire?’ His answer still haunts me today, “one of the biggest reasons I made this film is that I realized that progressive America to which I belong, has accepted a level, a threshold of tolerance which includes inequality.” Minervini then added, as a mantra that now accompanies my own daily mundane struggles as a woman “there is no more fight for equality, lesser inequality has become the new equality.” We as a society tolerate, we no longer wholeheartedly accept or deny. And we seem to be OK with tolerating a lot of human beings.
In introducing Lorna Tucker’s latest documentary ‘Amá’ I feel like I must mention my fellow Italian Minervini, because I, like him and Tucker, wear a different pair of glasses when I look at American society today. I see America through the lenses of a first generation immigrant. I don’t see Trump as the new evil, but simply a reincarnation of all that is considered to be as “American as apple pie” — institutionalized racism and the persecution of people who are different and who have the courage to remain different.
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