In A Dream You Saw a Way to Survive and You Were Full of Joy (في أحد الأحلام رأيت وسيلة للنجاة وكانت السعادة تملأ قلبك)
Qumra Projects
/ Feature Narrative / Lebanon, United Kingdom, Qatar
In Arabic
Rated: This film has not been rated.
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Synopsis
Layal, 21, returns home one night after a sexual encounter and joins her mother Salma, who is unaware that her daughter is sexually active. The weeks pass as Layal roams the empty spaces around her house at night before taking a pregnancy test—it’s positive. Avoiding her mother, she spends time with her best friend Dania and the pair go on a fruitless search for the father. Learning of a clandestine abortion clinic in the suburbs of Beirut, they venture there at night. After witnessing the mishandling of the procedure on a patient before her, Layal flees the clinic in fear of her life. She attempts to signal for help from her mother, whose attention is focused on her friend’s daughter, who took her own life when faced with a similar situation to Layal’s.
The man who impregnated Layal returns. Much older than Layal and well off, he pays for her to go to a better-equipped clinic. Layal spends the last days of her pregnancy contemplating motherhood, despite knowing that there is no place for single mothers in Lebanon. Assuming a pseudonym, she goes through with the procedure. After the abortion, Layal walks into her house, and she sits facing her mother, sharing a long silence between them. Layal shifts her gaze towards pictures of her and her mother hung on the wall, before breaking the silence with a mundane conversation.