The "Salim" film team, including Jordanian director Cynthia Madanat (third from left), and film producer Shadi Al-Sharaiha (second from left) (Anatolia)
Jordanian director Cynthia Madanat recently released the film "Salim", which deals with the story of a 9-year-old boy who experiences nightmares that disturb his sleep after losing his father in the war, and is forced to move to live elsewhere.
The film attempts to understand the child’s thoughts psychologically and understand what is going on in his mind, in addition to using animation to treat children affected by wars.
Madanat, her team, and the film’s producer, Shadi Al-Sharaiha, succeeded in realizing the idea of the work, which participated in 11 international festivals, most notably “Annecy” in France, which is one of the most important animation festivals in the world.
The director says that the idea for the film “came 5 years ago, before the war on the Gaza Strip (which broke out on October 7, 2023), and it addresses the issue of the health of children who have been exposed to psychological trauma.”
She added, "During our work, we relied on the opinion of specialists in this field...to tell the story of a child named Salim, aged 9 years, who lost his father during one of the wars. He lives with nightmares that disturb his sleep as a result of this tragedy, because of the difficult memories he experienced during the war period."
The director continued, "We tried to focus before producing the film on psychological understanding of what goes on in the thoughts of healthy-aged children, and we faced many challenges to produce it in its final form."
She explained, "The most prominent of these challenges lies in the way in which we wanted to clarify the problem and the solutions at the same time. This balance created some difficulties for us, but thank God we were able to overcome them."
Madanat pointed out that "the film is a family and suitable for all ages, but the most suitable is the group between 6 and 14 years."
As for the characters in the work, they are “14, including 9 main ones, including Salim, his mother, his brothers Nour and Saeed, his grandmother, his friends Fares, Zeina and Aboud, the psychological counselor, and Uncle Abu Duraid.”
She added, "The environment that the film simulates is the Levant, and it reflects the mixture of its cultures, but the dialect used is closer to Jordanian."
She stressed that she wanted those who watch the film, and who went through difficult circumstances, to experience Salim’s feelings. “We wanted to revive hope in the hearts of the children, and we do not want to take them back to the painful time they lived through. This film is a drop in the sea of pain, sadness, and suffering that the children of Gaza are experiencing, but I hope that it gives "A ray of hope for the survivors for a bright future."
Urgent psychological messages
For his part, "Salim" producer Shadi Al-Sharaiha pointed out that the announcement of the film "came in conjunction with a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, to confirm the idea for which it was created, and for which it was produced. The goal through the film was to pass psychological messages."
Al-Sharaiha explained, “The film has been shown since June 2023 at international festivals, and has been nominated for many awards, the most important of which is the Annecy Animation Festival in France, which is the most important animation festival in the world.”
He added, "In the same month, he won an award at the Cartoon on the Bee Festival in Italy, as the best soundtrack, in addition to the Audience Award last November from the Jordanian Child Festival."
The extent of the destruction in Gaza
Regarding the possibility of projecting the details of the film onto what is happening in Gaza, Al-Sharaiha concluded, “The extent of the destruction in Gaza requires two thousand healthy people to deal with what the children of the Palestinian Strip were exposed to,” referring to the extent of the casualty and its psychological impact on his children.
It is noteworthy that since last October 7, the Israeli army has been waging a devastating war on Gaza that, as of Saturday, left 27,238 martyrs and 66,452 injured, most of them children and women, according to the Palestinian authorities, and caused massive destruction and an unprecedented humanitarian disaster, according to the United Nations. .
Source: Anadolu Agency