Competición Oficial 2021

Scales

Shahad Ameen I 2019 I 74'

SYNOPSIS

Set in a dystopian Arab world, it tells the story of Hayat, a girl of strong convictions who lives in a poor fishing village governed by a dark tradition: each family is obliged to give one of their daughters to the sea creatures that inhabit the nearby waters. In return, the men of the village try to hunt them down. After being saved by her father, Hayat sees this tradition as a curse on the village and grows up to be a rebel. When her mother gives birth to a boy, the young girl must come to terms with the fact that it is now her turn to give herself to the creatures... or find a way to escape her fate.

BIOGRAPHY

Shahad Ameen

SHAHAD AMEEN was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He graduated from the University of West London with a degree in Video Production and Film Studies. His short films include Our Own Musical (2011), Leila's Window (2011) and Eye & Mermaid (2013). In 2019 he made his feature debut with Scales.

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Critical text

Scales begins with a harrowing event: a ritual sacrifice that defines all the inhabitants of a fishing village. From the first moments of the film, tradition is forced upon the will of the men while perpetuating the tragic fate of the women.
Shahad Ameen returns to the fantasy universe that he began to build in his short film Eye & Mermaid (2013), this time focusing his attention on an island stranded in time, where the fantastic and the poetic merge in a very particular visual and sound style full of contrasts (the dryness of the rocky landscape and the immensity of the sea surrounding the island; the Arabic songs of the fishermen and the silence shared by their wives and daughters). Even the space functions as a great division between the masculine and the feminine, a dichotomy that is made concrete in visual elements (the bars of the windows, the barbed wire fences or the gates) that define the limits of what is allowed to them. An allegory that, from the symbolic plane (favoured by a black and white that sharpens the mythological dimension of the story), demystifies the customs of a patriarchal society that stigmatises the feminine, excludes women from the concept of freedom and silences the oppressive brutality against their bodies.
There is an optimistic outlook in Scales, a break with the parameters by which society defines women as an otherness without a defined destiny. A vindication that is articulated without renouncing the fable, using the codes of the fairy tale to subvert traditions and myths. CRISTINA APARICIO

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