Once Again By Joud Said

Once Again opens with a long travelling shot, bathed in golden and sepia tones, in which mother, father and child are spending a peaceful afternoon on a terrace. The next shot is of a deserted landscape invaded by military trucks, which uses a colder, bluish filter.

These sequences demonstrate right from the beginning how the main character’s psychology is divided. The story itself follows two different plots which eventually come together: on one side, in the context of the Syrian military presence in Lebanon, the young Majd survives a gunshot but loses his memory; on the other side, Majd in his adulthood, now settled in Syria, fights against his past when a Lebanese woman comes to work for him.

Director Joud Said deals with separation on all levels. The characters are locked up inside window frames or between walls, and the background is often detached from the foreground, with the action taking place simultaneously in each space. Majd’s view of war is also split, between the childish and the realistic. He forgets about his father’s past in the military, but has an obsession with guns as a child and plays war video games as an adult.

These expressed divisions are regularly brought together in long slow travelling shots which link the different characters within the frame. The last shot leaves Majd lost in the middle of the border bridge between Syria and Lebanon. Joud Said’s first feature uses strong and inspired directing choices to underline the complex psychology of his character.

By Elisabeth Renault-Geslin