Purple Sea
“I see everything,” she says as if it was a curse. Brilliant sunshine, clear blue skies. The sea is calm, framed by a piece of railing. A peaceful moment if it weren’t for the fact that the sea is standing upright, vertical, like a waterfall. A rush of images, twirling, upside down, jolting. People in the boat, in the water, screams, life jackets, emergency whistles. There’s no horizon anymore, no sky, no up or down, only deepness and nothing to hold on to. Even time’s flow comes to a halt, contracting into the brutal present. She is filming and speaking. To beat being tired, being cold, the fact that help isn’t coming. To beat dying, just for something to remain.
Amel Alzakout, born 1988 in Syria, is an artist and filmmaker based in Leipzig. Between 2010 and 2013 she studied journalism at Cairo University, Egypt. In 2018, she won together with her co-director Khaled Abdulwahed the Film Prize for International Cooperation Germany/Arab World by the Robert Bosch Foundation with the feature length film Purple Sea produced by pong film. It’s her first directing.
Alemanha, 2020, 67’
director
Amel Alzakout, Khaled Abdulwahed