The More You Grow, The More You Lose: Wassim Geagea On His Short Film "Omé"
Director Wassim Geagea is a young Lebanese filmmaker who studied cinema before pursuing his master’s degree in film directing. His first short film My Grandfather’s Photo was screened in many film festivals and won the first prize in European films festival in Lebanon in 2012. Omé is his second short, which addresses his own personal experience with the death of his mother.
Following the death of his mother, 9-year-old Elias goes to extreme lengths to naively bring her back from Jesus' heaven all while defying his faith.
This film has already screened at 9 prestigious film festivals and was also scheduled to screen at several others, which were waylaid by the coronavirus. We had the opportunity to chat with Wassim about the film, telling personal stories, finding the right actor for the part, and much much more.
The film was based on your own experience with the loss of your mother, and it definitely has a very personal feel. There’s a lot of emotions and inner turmoil; it feels very real. I was curious, how much of Elias’ story is yours?
The movie was born from a personal experience when I lost my mother at the age of four. I grew up trying to understand the true meaning of death and had a lot of questions like; where do we go after we die, is there an afterlife? And many more questions that the main character Elias asked in the movie. There are a lot of points in common between Elias and myself like, all the questions Elias asked in the movie were always in my head when I was young, the village I grew up in, the Christian community I was raised in, and the dilemma that was always present in my head: how God who loves us that much can hurt us?
But at the end it’s a fiction film, not everything that happened in the movie is based on what happened in my childhood even though I would’ve liked to do what Elias did when I was young.
When you face one of the hardest situations in life and you reach a dead end, a lot of creative ideas pop up in your mind in order to wish to see to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Your first film, My Grandfather’s Photo, also explored your personal experience and beautifully commemorated a family member. What’s your secret to taking something immensely personal and making it palpable on a wide scale?
To make a movie based on my personal experience is something very important and basic to me because these experiences affected me and hurt me, and for me every artist needs to express what he/she feels in order for his/her work to be truthful and real.
The European and American societies do not need more directors to make movies about their way of living and what they go through, that’s why I think that we should make movies that reflect our way of living, our difficulties, and our experiences on high production standards from script writing to directing that will be reached internationally. But at the end we are all humans we all go through bad times and problems even though we have different nationalities, religions, race… it’s our feelings that count and that need to be shown in the film for it to reach success.
Is it cathartic to explore your experiences cinematically? Have you learned anything new about yourself through this process?
Cinema is not a trauma therapy for what we experience in life, but those traumas are the main motives for our movies. In my case, the movies that I made helped with the clarification of my own memory. Being able to make this movie come to life only by the few things that I remember from this drastic event, and to change my unclear memories of it into real visual memories that helped me become at peace with myself and to surpass the trauma of my mother’s death is what’s cathartic for me. For example, the funeral scene helped me recreate what I had in my mind from this event and live the whole scene all over again which later became my memory of it. And this is for me the power of making a movie especially when developing an idea of a personal experience that we might be affected a lot by it so we work on it from all our hearts and put all of our efforts until we reach the audience’s hearts.
I love the stealing of the Mother Mary statue and the tug of war between Elias and Jesus that ensues as a result. How did you come up with that plot device?
For someone to come with such an idea that means he underwent a drastic experience that he needs to express in some way, just like a disease, especially when he turns these feelings into a script on a paper. I went through a lot of brainstorming and thinking in order to express what I really feel: if God was able to take away my mother, why can’t the main character do the same thing? And that’s where the idea of the statue stealing came from.
After writing the first draft and got the grants of Doha Film Institute, I met my co-writer Tony Eli Kanaan and developed with him my second draft. After, with the editor and producer’s point of view, we were able to come up with the final result that was shown on the screen. So the whole movie didn't come from one place, it’s a long procedure that has various opinions.
The film really puts a lot of weight on its child actor, Jack Abboud El Janah, who really rose to the challenge. How did you find such a great young talent?
The choice of the main character’s role was the biggest challenge for me. He had to put a lot of true feelings of sadness because he lost his mother merged with feelings of anger towards the society he belongs to. And for me it was hard to find the perfect person for this role, that’s why I insisted on giving this role to someone who actually went through an experience similar to Elias’ story. The credit for this task goes to the line producer Ghiwa El Haiby who put all her efforts in finding this child. We found Elias in a convent with his mom and nuns in a village far away. Ever since our first meeting with him I was sure he was perfectly suited for the role due to the sadness in this eyes since I personally lived a similar experience. And of course with the help psychologists ‘Jack’ was able to perform the role perfectly and he was healed from the trauma he went through.
From a visual standpoint, what was the most important thing for you to capture with this story?
From my visual point of view, the village’s frame is beautiful to capture, from the villagers to the landscape, to the church, to the way of living… The village’s visuals are interesting to see especially that they have a main role in the movie’s storyline. The village’s warm colors are powerful on camera especially that these kinds of colors reflect the pain of the main character in the movie. But for me, the most important thing to capture is Elias’ true feelings of pain, sadness, and anger for the movie to be outstanding. And the simplicity of those colors helped the receptor’s eye catch Elias’ feelings from his eyes without the distraction of so many colors. The village is the perfect place for this kind of movie.
What do you hope audiences take away from the film?
The movie sheds light on all the losses humans experience in their lives. Elias in the movie lost his mother but the movie’s message embraces all kinds of losses not only the one of a parent. One should understand that the more you grow, the more you lose; family members, friends, loved ones…And the caption “for all our losses” at the end of the movie expands this topic to a bigger scale and lets each person question his losses in order to understand his agonies, get over them, and continue his life.
Unfortunately, once you grow up you start realizing how politics wear the mask of religion in order to rule the country. That’s why people with strong religious beliefs get affected directly by the ideology of religion even when the decisions are wrong and we reach the level of brainwashing. This led to a point were a lot of crimes were committed to defend the name of god. The extremism in religion helped us in creating the tension in the storyline of the movie, powered its mechanism, and gave it deeper meanings and aspects. From my point of view, I think that there shouldn’t be two extremes regarding this issue, The movie isn’t encouraging people to stop following their religious beliefs, but at the same time they should be aware of everything and should thrive to reach the answers to the questions they have in mind in order for them to evolve and to release the tension of religion extremism. And that’s what I hope the audience would understand and take away from the film.
Do you have any upcoming projects in the works that you can share with us?
Previously, I didn’t like making short films but with time I realized that they are very interesting and powerful to make. For now, I’m preparing a new short film that will be shot in September. Also, in the meantime I’m writing my new feature film that talks about a story that happened in my native village Barka. And I hope this feature film reaches as much success as my short film Omé.
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!