Anqa

The first images are accompanied by a gentle bubbling sound and create a sense of disorientation. A cloudy panorama, a street in the fog, a dark corridor. This ominous exterior stands in contrast to the warmer colour scheme of the apartments where the film’s protagonists spend their time. The three women share similarly traumatising experiences of violence in Jordan; they allude to rape, assault, detention as they speak. In their apartments, they seek refuge from the violence of the outside world.

Helin Çelik does not tell these women’s stories, but rather sketches their post-traumatic situation in impressive, poetic film imagery. Raquel Fernández Núñez's camera shows their bodies in extreme close-ups: eye sockets marked by insomnia, trembling hands. Their traumas also reveal disturbing thoughts, such as one protagonist’s idea to kill her children to protect them. At the same time, she is seen interacting with them lovingly. ANQA shows how these women struggle not to allow the suffering they have experienced to define them. “I am not the remains ,” one of them says. “I exist.” (Jan-Philipp Kohlmann)

Production Rebeca Sánchez López, Helin Çelik. Production companies Kepler Mission Films (Barcelona, Spain), Helin Çelik (Wien, Austria). Director Helin Çelik. Screenplay Helin Çelik. Cinematography Raquel Fernández Núñez. Editing Sara Fattahi. Music Nadim Husni, Victor Jann Nasri Bahdousheh. Sound design Nicolás Tsabertidis. Sound Maitane Carballo Alonso. Production manager Rebeca Sánchez López. Executive producer Rebeca Sánchez López, Helin Çelik.

Helin Çelik, born in Diyarbakir, Kurdistan, Turkey in 1991, she studied art therapy, comparative literature, theatre and digital media. Helin Çelik lives in Vienna, where she works as an artist and art therapist. Following WHAT THE WIND TOOK AWAY(2017), ANQA is her second feature-length film.

Films: 2017: What the Wind Took Away (75 min.). 2018: For a Moment There (10 min.). 2023: Anqa.

Bonus Material