Noura Kevorkian is a Syrian-Lebanese filmmaker who made her filmmaking debut with her first short documentary ” Veils Uncovered” (Official Competition, Amsterdam IDFA) about lingerie and the veiled women of Damascus. Kevorkian’s second film, “Anjar: Flowers, Goats and Heroes,” is a historical POV documentary about a young girl growing up during the Lebanese Civil War who discovers that all the elders of her village are genocide survivors from World War I. Kevorkian’s first feature film, “23 Kilometres,” is the experiential story of a man living with Parkinson’s disease.
“Batata” is screening at the 2022 Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, which is taking place April 28-May 8. Find more information on the fest’s website.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
NK: “Batata” started in 2009 as a story about a Syrian farmer: a woman named Maria who worked for Mousa, a Lebanese landowner. Set in beautiful green potato fields in Lebanon’s Bekka valley where I grew up, the film was to address the tense relationship between Lebanon and Syria.
The film took a turn none of us expected when the Syrian revolution broke out in the middle of filming. The story became much larger, providing an insider’s look into the lives of refugees over an unprecedented 10-year period.
Beginning in 2012 with the Syrian Refugee Crisis’s onset, the Beautiful potato fields began to slowly transform. With Maria’s family and relatives from Raqqa Syria escaping the war and arriving in huge numbers, Maria and Mousa’s migrant-worker camp offered a safe haven. Over the years, as millions more fled the escalating war in Syria, the Bekka’s green fields were taken over by sprawling refugee camps with thousands of tents.
The film depicts the destruction of war and its effects on displaced people. In the current global context, I believe “Batata” offers a perspective and maybe even some foresight into what is unfolding today, exactly 10 years later, in Eastern Europe – a tragic repetition of events.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
NK: My original intention was to make a film on historical tension. Between Syria and Lebanon. These two countries are part my country. family’s history. My mother is Syrian, while my father is Lebanese. Although I was born in Syria, I grew up in Lebanon. I have felt a love/hate relationship with these two Arab neighbors all my life and wanted to find a nonpolitical way of telling the story.
One day in 2008, while visiting my parents in Lebanon’s Bekka Valley, my mother’s friend Mousa invited me to take a ride in his famous red Chevrolet pickup truck. It was in these green fields that I saw Maria in her stunning red dress walking towards me.
I knew that I had found my story the day after that. Here was a charismatic and striking Muslim Syrian. An itinerant farmer woman who works for a Christian Lebanese man. It was the perfect group of subjects that I needed to launch into my story of two nations, which I had long wanted.
The following year, in 2009, I started shooting “Batata” – “potato” in Arabic — thinking I would complete filming by the fall harvest of 2011. In March 2011, the revolution in Syria began and everything changed. Maria and her family quickly went from farmers to refugees, and I couldn’t stop filming, hoping to capture an end to the hostilities and to see Maria return home to Syria.
Thirteen years after I first started filming, the film is finally complete and is touring international festivals, bringing the world Maria’s story, representing the experiences of over six million Syrian refugees similarly displaced in what remains the world’s largest human forced migration crisis of our times.
Tragically, this is not the only refugee crisis. Thousands of Ukrainians are now seeking refuge from a senseless war.
W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?
NK: “Batata” is unlike any other refugee documentary to date. The film gives audiences a unique opportunity to witness, from a woman’s perspective, an entire decade in the lives of refugees, representing the millions of nameless and faceless Syrians lost and all-but-forgotten outside their homeland.
As a verité film, “Batata” offers a very intimate access inside the tents and lives of these refugees living in extremely harsh conditions.
2022 marks 10 years since the Syrian Refugee Crisis began. Maria and six million others are still displaced. They are unable safely to return home. Return home. Unfortunately, forced migration seems to be becoming more common: Armenians were expelled in the year preceding the Ukraine. During the Artzak war and prior to that, the Afghanis.
I urge people to see the film, and to continue helping refugees if possible. Donations to UNHCR or similar NGOs can be a great help. Every refugee needs our help.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
NK I was not prepared for the emotional and The psychological challenges of filming a crisis as devastating as the inside, covering real people’s lives and their incredible losses for an entire decade. It was hard work for me as a filmmaker as well as for me as an actress.
Over a period of 10 years, I have seen years of trauma, conflict, and violence. Although I was behind the lens filming, I was also living alongside them for so long, experiencing it all as it happened — it was impossible to find the right balance between being a filmmaker and being a compassionate human being. The film required me to deal with a lot of emotional and psychological traumas that I didn’t anticipate when I began to shoot it.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Let us know how you got the film produced.
NK: When I began my documentary filmmaking, it was like many independent documentary filmmakers. shooting “Batata,” I used my own money. We pitched the project to the Dubai International Film Festival in 2012. We won the best pitch award and a USD $25,000. Later, we were awarded grants by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
Although the funds raised would have been sufficient to make the original film, the budget was not. It was not enough to cover the 10 year of filming and the two years of postproduction. editing. While I was a one-woman crew – director, camera operator, and sound recordist all in one – only having to cover my own costs.
Thankfully, I was able to complete another film in far less time (“23 Kilometres”), which helped pay the rent. It was my commitment and determination that made this film possible, as well the sacrifices my family and husband made throughout the entire process.
It’s a family project of love and humanity that I call it.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
NK: As a young girl, I grew up in the 1980s during the Lebanese Civil War. There was little electricity so there was no TV. In my house, the TV set was used as a plant stand – never to be turned on. So I lived mainly in my imagination.
My mother is also a great storyteller. My childhood village was filled with storytelling elders. I have always loved stories, and from a young age I imagined them visually in my mind. Opera is my favorite opera. For years, I have been creating stories and imagery that are synchronized to music in my head.
While we had no TV, my father did love movies, so once a month – when the roads were open and safe – he would drive my sisters and I down the Biblical Damascus highway, Lebanon to the nearest town with a movie theater. My love for film only grew after that.
Kids living in war don’t get many chances in life. This is why I came here. Canada as a young lady to follow my dreams.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
NK: My first year in Canada, my high school counselor advised me not to study film in university so I wouldn’t become a “starving artist.” With the best of intentions, he explained that as a young girl on my own, with no family in Canada, I would have to be self-reliant, and earn a living with a solid job. This was both the best advice and the worst.
I studied finance and economics at the University of Toronto. But, passion and life eventually led me back to the career that my high school counselor tried so hard to protect me from. Sometimes we can’t change our fate.
W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?
NK: As a woman director I would advise others before taking on any responsibility. Projects that involve violence, trauma, war, or both should be prepared for the worst. Directing is an art. This is a very difficult job. However, when you add topics such as hatred, sexual assault, or murder to the mix, it becomes all-consuming and even detrimental to your emotional, psychological, and ultimately physical well being.
Director, regardless of their title, must be able to deal with difficult topics. Women who work in dangerous or remote areas need to be prepared twice. So, get help before you start your project. Consult professionals. Agree and commit to what lines you don’t want crossed, and know when it is ok to stop the project and shut it down. Don’t burn out from taking on too much. Your well-being is as important as any film.
These lessons were too late for me. But I’m hoping people will learn from my own experiences and do things differently.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
NK: That’s tough. Many of my favourites are: directors are women, including Agnieszka Holland, Jane Campion, Chloé Zhao, and Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal. One reason I could think of is that one reason is that they make films that compete with the very best films out there, yet aren’t initially obvious that they were made by a woman. It’s only upon deeper reflection that one realizes these films could only be made by a woman. As for my favorite recent film, I’d have to say it’s Zhao’s “Nomadland.”
W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you creative? If so, how?
NK: The pandemic was extremely hard for me. I had to cancel my trip to Lebanon because of the pandemic. I was isolated at home with my two young kids, my husband, and our new adopted dog – a refugee himself, rescued from the streets of Cairo. With the kids at home crammed into our small house, I had to face the hundreds of hours of footage shot over 10 years to try to piece “Batata” into a cohesive story.
It was a daunting job – the hardest of my career. I was already suffering from depression and PTSD, so it was like “squeezing lemon juice on an open wound” as the Armenians say. Mike Munn, an editor, helped me trim my rough cut of four-hours down to its current length. It was a huge help. I could not let go even one frame of footage. I was so attached my story and my subjects.
W&H: The film industry has a long history of under representing people of color on screen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What are your suggestions for making Hollywood and/or the doc industry more inclusive?
NK: I’m very impressed with the steps taken recently within the film industry to finally make room for authentic, diverse voices. Artists and performers with diverse racial, sexual, and cultural identities now have the opportunity to succeed where they were previously denied by systemic barriers.
I’m glad to witness this change during my own career. I hope that this progress continues, reaching a level that would make the topic irrelevant, rectifying and recalibrating 100 years worth of discriminatory history within entertainment.
Source: Women And Hollywood
