In Yemen, the selection of a movie to be submitted for the Oscars didn't stir controversy as it did in France. There weren't many options: The Burdened, Amr Gamal's second feature film, which premieres on January 31, stood out and will represent the small country that is plagued by war and internal conflict. The film tells the story of a couple overwhelmed by rising prices and a precarious day-to-day existence (power cuts, crumbling state schools, etc.) who are expecting their fourth child but do not have the means to bring it up properly. Ahmed and Isra will do everything they can to terminate the pregnancy in a country where abortion is banned.
The director and filmmaker, born in 1983, films and creates performances to document his country, or rather his city of Aden. At the Pune Festival east of Mumbai in India, where he was presenting his film in competition, Gamal told Le Monde about his incredible journey as a self-taught filmmaker. Born in Poland to Yemeni parents, he only moved to Aden in 1989, at the age of 6. The city was vibrant, but it didn't last. After the departure of the British colonialists in 1967, South Yemen proclaimed itself the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen and sided with the Soviet Union. In 1990, the north and south of the country were reunited, under the authority of president and dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh (1947-2017) – who was overthrown in 2012 in the wake of the Arab Spring.
In the 1990s, an Islamist wave swept through Aden's cinemas and theaters, leading to their closure. "The film reels and all the filming equipment were taken to the north of the country," explained Gamal. "I saw this with the eyes of a child and it saddened me. I thought: 'Why are they doing this to my town?' From that moment on, I wanted to document it, to keep a record."
The young man learned filmmaking on the job. "I studied engineering while doing theater with a collective. We created plays, and then, I was offered the chance to shoot TV series." Gamal made his first feature film in 2018, 10 Days Before the Wedding. It was also submitted to the Oscars but had yet to be screened in Aden. "We rented two wedding halls, and in each of them, we hung a large wooden board, painted white, to use as a screen. Word of mouth spread, and we sold 70,000 tickets. The film ran for eight months! As soon as you talk about cinema in Aden, people come, it's like a huge wave of nostalgia."
The Burdened was funded by a government grant and investor funds. "Nobody asked for too many details about the script," noted Gamal. The public hospital, where several scenes were shot, wasn't too fussy either. "On the other hand, the private clinic did ask us for details before opening its doors to us. And since the gynecologist in this scene refuses to abort the heroine, everything was fine!"
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