Sundance 2022: Warsha (Short Film) | Interview of Director Dania Bdeir

On top of being a remarkable technical achievement, Warsha is a marvelously crafted and powerful visual poem, anchored by tantalizing and gripping visuals, that will stick to your mind. We had the honour of chatting with director Dania Bdeir.

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival is just around the corner (spanning from January 20th to January 30th), and we already had the honour of discovering one gem among this year’s short film lineup: an outstanding and powerful visual poem entitled Warsha: a 16-minute film directed by Dania Bdeir, and produced by Coralie Dias, which will be presented in a few days at Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival, in the wake of its upcoming World Premiere at Sundance.

Warsha explores the story of Mohammad, a Syrian migrant worker working as a crane operator in Beirut. One day, he volunteers to take on one of the tallest and notoriously most dangerous cranes in Lebanon. Away from everyone’s eyes, he is able to live out his secret passion. Set in a context where construction workers are often underpaid, undocumented and overlooked Syrian immigrants, Warsha stars Khansa, a multi-disciplinary artist redefining masculinity in the Middle East, and unfolds as the story of a stoic and quiet man seeking the space to unleash his inner diva.

Warsha proves to be a captivating, audacious and powerful film, anchored by alluring and breathtaking visuals in which one man breaks free from the mass by rising above everyone else. In the heights, he can finally be himself. The film which unfolds as a poem, demonstrates the amount of courage it takes to be and express oneself. By embracing this danger, the film’s character ends up the central piece to a marvelously crafted and powerfully metaphorical movie that will stick to your mind.

We had the honour of chatting with Lebanese/Canadian filmmaker Dania Bdeir, the director behind Warsha, about the genesis of the story, her collaboration with Khansa, as well as the challenges and opportunities brought about by the use of HDR LED Walls and cutting-edge Unreal Engine Technologies to craft the film.

Film Fest Report: Hi Dania, congratulations on a captivating, audacious, alluring and powerful film! Warsha works like a poem showing that one must escape from the mass and rise above it to finally be oneself. What were the first elements from this “poem” you had in mind when you started crafting the story? 

Dania Bdeir: Thank you so much for your kind words. It all started when, in 2017, I was sitting on my balcony in Lebanon overlooking all of Beirut and I saw a man standing on top of one of the tallest construction cranes. At first I was afraid thinking the man was going to jump. It all looked so dangerous and unsafe. Then as he kneeled down and put his forehead to the floor, I realized that he was praying. It was a beautiful sight and this is when I became infatuated with the mysterious world of crane operators. These little men who operate these gigantic beasts from these tiny cabins where they can see the world and no one can see them.

The more I spent time in construction sites speaking to engineers and workers, the more I was convinced that I wanted to make a film where the protagonist was a crane operator. Throughout my visits, I was overwhelmed with three main palpable aspects: That space is very masculine. It is very loud and the construction workers were all underpaid and often undocumented Syrians.

I was drawn to the idea that the crane operator, out of all these workers, was the only one who gets the chance to escape these three aspects when he climbs the dangerous ladder up towards the sky. Up there, there’s no noise, no judging eyes, no labels.

So in terms of the first elements of the “poem” that I had in mind when crafting the story: it was the progressive disappearance of noise in order to find silence. I had this visual in mind of one long take rising up with the character as he climbs the huge construction crane ladder. One long continuous take tracking up with him. Visually, he’d be literally leaving the city below as he rises up to the sky replacing a background of buildings with a background of clouds. Auditorily, the soundscape would shift progressively evolving from a loud and overwhelming noise to a sweet silence. From construction and city cacophony to a light breeze and the space to be.

Film Fest Report: How did the collaboration with artist Khansa start, and how did he blend in the project?

Dania Bdeir: While I was in my Warsha bubble, constantly thinking about construction sites and about the story of the film, I had the chance to attend a performance by an amazing gender bending multi-talented artist called Khansa. After the performance, he and I talked for hours and I told him about Warsha. We started asking ourselves: what if, the crane operator is seeking up there the space and privacy to break out of gender norms and express himself truly, in a way that he can’t in his daily life.

Khansa and I built the character of Mohammad together. Khansa is a multi-talented artist who uses his art, his voice and his body to challenge the definition of masculinity in the Middle East. He identified with the character of Mohammad on a personal level: the feeling of being different and of growing up in an environment that didn’t understand nor encourage his artistic inclinations. His entire artistic practice was a process in which he had to actively seek out a space to be himself, seek out mentors, teaching himself music, dance and art.

Through this journey, he found a way to be true to himself: someone who challenges any conditioned notion of how a person should be. Growing up in a full house with two brothers and a big family, he knew all too well the feeling of needing a private space to experiment and play freely away from everyone’s eyes.

Furthermore, during the preparation, it was very important to make sure that we were all operating with empathy and trying to experience this same story through different perspectives and not only our own. We organized for Khansa to spend a few days working in a construction site where nobody knew that he was an actor and where he received no special treatment. Khansa entered the male dominated world of Syrian workers and felt the physical & emotional strain, the pressures and the marginalization. He was able to bring this experience into his performance.

Film Fest Report: Technically, how did the use of HDR LED walls help you develop your artistic vision?

Dania Bdeir: By the time we decided that there was no way to shoot this film without special effects (believe me I tried), I was very nervous. I had never shot anything in a green screen studio before. I was worried that it would be a challenge both for me to direct and for Khansa to have to act when neither of us can see anything around us but green.

When we started talking to LA PLANÈTE ROUGE about shooting there, they told us they were building a state of the art virtual production studio that used “unreal engine” technology. It sounded amazing but it wasn’t going to be finished in time for our shoot. I guess the pandemic helped in that respect because we had to postpone the shoot which gave them the time to finish building the studio and we were the first film to shoot at THE NEXT STAGE.

It was amazing because neither Khansa, nor I, nor the cinematographer had to imagine anything. It felt like we were overlooking the city of Beirut and the Mediterranean even though we were in a studio in the south of France. We had taken 360 HD images of Lebanon with a drone at different heights and different times of day and the studio had a U-shaped 2.5 pitch LED wall boasting almost 50 million pixels immersing us in that reality. We could use the light generated from the HDR LED screens which bathed us in warm sunset light for example and we had the flexibility of changing backgrounds at the press of a button. The DP and I were coming up with creative ideas on the ground as we saw different backgrounds allowing us to frame freely. We even had the control to get rid of or add elements right then and there.

For Khansa, he was able to give a naturalistic performance in which he reacted to actual views around him instead of having to imagine. Everything looked and felt real. It truly is the future of filmmaking and I feel so lucky and happy to have had that experience.

Film Fest Report: The film will have the best kick off one can imagine, with a world premiere at Sundance, followed by a selection at Clermont Ferrand International Short Film Festival. What do you expect audiences to take away from it?

Dania Bdeir: I could not be happier to have Warsha selected at these two festivals which are renowned to be among the best film festivals in the world. I am very anxious and excited to hear what audiences have to say about the film, how it’ll make them feel and how they’ll interpret the story. That’s the thing about working on a film: the creative team spends ages overthinking and planning every detail but then there’s a moment where you have to release it into the world and it no longer belongs to us. It belongs to audiences from around the world. So I have no expectations, I have just curiosity and excitement. I hope they like it and I hope it makes them feel something.

Film Fest Report: On a personal note, what did working on this film bring you as a storyteller and filmmaker?

Dania Bdeir: I learned so much while working on this film. I learned the importance of working with people who are as passionate about the film as I am and to prioritize that above all when I pick my team. I am so happy I met all the people who worked on this film and I believe I have found collaborators for life.

I also learned a lot technically from working with this new technology. I feel like it’s a privilege that not many filmmakers of my level have access to so I’m grateful to have had this experience and all the learnings that come with it. I used to always fear that resorting to technology in film can kill the intimacy and authenticity of storytelling but I realize now how much technology can open up doors and free us of some limitations. It can support an authentic and emotional story as opposed to hinder it.

Finally, working on this film taught me resilience, how to roll with the punches and how to adapt because we faced many obstacles during the past 4 years (global pandemic, economic collapse of Lebanon, Beirut Blast, among others) and we managed to lick our wounds, pick ourselves up, stay focused and take it to the finish line.

Acknowledgements: Dania Bdeir, Shaimaa Khan (London Flair PR).