High angle, low angle.

Shadows is one of those films that inspires a deep sense of harmony—at least in form. Animation has this power to draw attention to its own strings and mechanisms, without that gesture ever becoming distracting. Here, the director knows very well this reality and puts it to good use. The form of her most recent short film—colorful and radiant, not unlike the childlike gaze of its protagonist—manages to illuminate Ahlam’s words and elevate her story to the level of great tragedies, all while shining in its own right. One never overshadows the other. Their union is perfect.

There’s no need to hide the pencil strokes or to tone down the color palette. With Rand Beiruty, the drawing itself is a vehicle of meaning. In this regard, the choice of perspective strikes by its uniqueness. The many high and low angles we get to see—sometimes extreme, distorting legs, heads, and arms of the characters swirling around the protagonist—always leads us back to the same thought: here is a child lost in an adult world. Adults too big for her. Adults too old, disconnected, distracted. Too far away. These people are up there, their heads in the clouds almost, out of reach, out of touch. Almost no one lowers their gaze or extends a hand.

And yet, it is these very adults who have propelled her into this terrible environment. A marital environment she inevitably had to flee—and at a great cost. A cost… unthinkable, and at the age of thirteen! Ahlam, wandering through this airport that is as real as it is imagined—fragments of memory whose foundations get blurrier, the more they reveal themselves—is just a child. That is what these pencil strokes, as colorful as they are expressive, are shouting for us to understand. What they stubbornly keep reminding us: she was just a child.

She was just a child.

Jason Todd
Programmateur et cinéaste