Al Intithar is the first film of the trilogy BAYT (HOUSE), which won the Sharjah Art Foundation Production Grant 2012. The concept of BAYT is inspired by Anthony Shadid’s (1968 – 2012) memoirs House of Stone, where he writes that “bayt translates literally as house, but its connotations resonate beyond rooms and walls, summoning longings gathered about family and home. In the Middle East, bayt is sacred. Empires fall. Nations topple. Borders may shift. Old loyalties may dissolve or, without warning, be altered. Home, whether it be structure or familiar ground, is finally the identity that does not fade.”
In Al Intithar the notion of home has become a sensitive matter in the life of the protagonists, as they had to leave their own. Home is no longer a rooted existence or a solid place for the female protagonist, Ekhlas Alhlwani, but instead becomes a tent, since she has been forced to flee from Syria to Zaatari, the refugee camp in the Jordanian desert. The film, which presents itself as an excerpt, follows her life over a period of seven weeks, translating the tragic macrocosm of the Syrian war to the intimate microcosm of a relentless woman and her three children.