At first glance, “The Lights of Aden” tells the story of an abortion in Yemen, but we quickly understand that it is much more than that. Yemeni director Amr Gamal lives and works in Aden and he takes us through the streets of this port city as well as through the layers of a society in full decline. Without forgetting the internal tremor of a country shaken by a civil war which shakes men and women as much as their religious, political and human values.
6 mins
“ Have you seen the price of vegetables? ? » Watch a film shot in Yemen is a rare occasion where every detail surprises and dazzles. In The Lights of Aden, the images of this port city surprise with their innocence, their original side, their desire to make history. Before exploring the interiors of the characters, the camera immerses us in the daily life of the inhabitants, transforming banal scenes into events: entering a shop or a pharmacy, meeting a street vendor, buying a school textbook in a bookstore or apples. of land in the market, greeting the grandmother on the balcony or withdrawing money from an ATM under the eye of a security guard armed with a machine gun. Sometimes we are faced with a panoramic view of the city and the mountains that surround it, as if the images captured could protect the buildings and its inhabitants against future disasters of the civil war.
Yemen, a country ravaged by war
In the media, Yemen is best known for being a country ravaged by war since 2014, with hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced and one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. Both very far from all this and in the middle of it all, Amr Gamal brings us to his city Aden, to follow the story of Ahmed (Khaled Hamdan) and Isra’a (Abeer Mohammed). A happily married couple, visibly open and tolerant, raising their three children with love and respect. However, the country is shaken by political unrest, society is in bad shape, chaos reigns more and more in the city and the entire population seems to be sinking into poverty.
Ahmed also lost his job as a television journalist at the Aden TV channel, which was closed by the authorities. As a driver of a shared taxi, he tries to keep his head above water, but he is less and less successful. Already, they can no longer pay the rent and school fees for their children when Isra’a announces to Ahmed that she is pregnant, despite using contraception. Under pressure from her husband, she agrees to have an abortion, reassured by a video on social networks where an imam explains that the Koran tolerates abortion until the 120th day. But where, in a country where abortion is strictly prohibited? What follows is an obstacle course where the different visions of life and the multiple interpretations of the Koran will clash. Where everyone’s political and religious convictions will be confronted with a reality where life no longer has any place.
Aden, the city of director Amr Gamal
Inspired by a story lived in Aden by the wife of a friend, Amr Gamal, 40 years old, brings together in the film the history of the city which still exudes the pride of having chased out the British settlers in the 1960s, but also the socialist era when it became, until 1990, a pioneer city in the cultural and artistic field, before the violent reunification between the South and the North, the arrival of the Islamist wave and a civil war which never ends more…
When it came to directing actors, the director’s watchword was clearly: to be and not to appear. The game is minimalist, yet on screen the documentary effects of this confidence in purity and simplicity are impressive. It is the theatrical legacy of a director who owes everything to live performance. In a country where there were no longer any theaters, this information technology graduate started making them, even transforming an old cinema in Aden into a performance hall for his own troupe. With the same collective he began to shoot films for television. This is how he came to movie theater in un country without a film industry, with around ten theaters showing mainly American and Indian films, but also Egyptian and Russian ones. In 2018, his first film, 10 Days Before the Wedding, was the first Yemeni feature film screened in Yemen in 40 years and even presented at the Oscars. To show this to the inhabitants of Aden, he built wooden screens measuring six by four meters installed in wedding halls. 70,000 visitors came to see a piece of their city and local actors on the big screen.
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In The Lights of Aden, every shot in the film reflects this theatrical past. Each scene takes place in a specific setting, linked to an emblematic place for the characters in the film. The large market makes visible the loss of the family’s purchasing power; the kitchen is transformed into a reality factory where the transistor radio broadcasts bad news in front of an empty fridge; in the living room, the family reunion is transformed into a manifestation of the new order of a society at war; in the hospital, the prayer rug and bribes are omnipresent and coexist; in the shared taxi, the different skin colors and clothes of the passengers symbolize the cultural mix of a once strategic city between India and Europe, built on the exchange of civilizations. This is how Amr Gamal wishes to pay tribute to the Lights of Aden defying disasters and misfortune. This is the universal message of this Yemeni story. Produced by Yemen, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, the film was selected for the Berlinale in Germany, won the Grand Prize at the Chicago Film Festival in the United States and the Best Director prize at the Valencia Film Festival in Spain.