This movie is the very last one of the Oscar nominated movies that I watched this year--it is now streaming on Hulu, so it is easy to catch, but it wasn't when I was trying to watch it. The films that are nominated in the International Film category that make even the short list tend to be ones that you might struggle through and think about rather than sit back and enjoy (this is no Love and Monsters), and this one is no exception.
The movie opens with Sam Ali madly in love with the upper-class, crystal blue-eyed Abeer, and she with he. Sam immediately goes about getting into huge trouble politically when he says something off the cuff about the ruling party, in the context of his love of his intended, while on a crowded train, and while it is clearly ill-advised, it is not a hanging offense, except that in Syria it is and he is jailed for it. Welcome to Bahair's version of governance. Sam then flees to Lebanon and while he is there he meets the world-famous artist Jeffrey Godefroi by chance at a party that he’s crashed. Unable to accept that the obedient Abeer has been married to a well-off man under family pressure, he impulsively accepts Godefroi’s condescending offer and gets inked with the print of a massive Schengen visa on his back, traveling from gallery to gallery with Godefroi and the sharp-tongued dealer Soraya Waldy in the aftermath. It is modern day indentured servitude, and even the artist comes to see that the concept and the reality are further apart than he has intended. But wait, there is a way out. Lots to think about here.
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