Five dark rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen with cramped windows to the world: that’s the entire cosmos that Philippe Van Leeuw’s INSYRIATED is set in. Virginie Surdej’s camera entrenches itself behind curtains, peers through slits, door cracks, and bars to the outside that consists of debris and ruins – the remains of a city.

She takes on the perspective of the protagonists: mother Oum Yazan and her three children Yara, Aliya, Yazan, her old father-in-law, her daughter’s boyfriend, domestic worker Delhani, young neighbor Halima, her husband, and her baby. The Civil War has been raging for a long time and they’re holding their last post in their apartment that is surrounded by snipers. Leaving it is highly dangerous, and Oum Yazan’s husband should be returning from the outside soon. The water reserves are dwindling, there’s no more milk, the front door is barricaded. There’s a state of emergency outside, but there’s tablecloth on the kitchen table, the domestic worker has her apron on, and they eat lunch together.

This little piece of normality is kept up because of Oum Yazan (a grandiose and unflinching Hiam Abbass), who reminds everyone about their daily tasks and cooks food. While the images simulate routine, the soundtrack of war is always present. Shots are fired and bombs drop, a loud knock on the door signals plunderers looking for valuable goods.

The living space keeps shrinking Van Leeuw’s intense chamber drama. In the end, the kitchen is the only shelter, the center of an insular apartment universe, surrounded by death and destruction. When two men break into the apartment, all of the inhabitants stay in the kitchen, everyone except Halima, and everyone can hear her being hit and raped. Does one sacrifice one’s own humanity for the sake of one’s family in such a horror scenario? Should Oum Yazan have helped and taken the risk of endangering her own family? INSYRIATED doesn’t judge and lets viewers answer these questions.

The only place that is safe, also psychologically, is one’s interior world. The film is centered on life in a state of siege. It’s dedicated to the invisible, those rarely seen in the media, because they’re inside: the civilians, women, the elderly, children, far away from the battlefield, but just as unfree and traumatized. INSYRIATED won the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlinale.

Lili Hering

Translation: Elinor Lewy