What's been going on in the Middle East is gutwrenching and heartbreaking, but I find it hard to express my feelings about it outloud. I read the papers and listen to great journalists like Christiane Amanpour, but it's hard for me to put out there my feelings because they're a mountain big. When I see innocent civilians being killed it's not just some nameless unfortunate person, I see my neighbor back in Iran whom I used to play soccer with on the streets. I see my aunt and uncle I used to visit in the hot summers of Andimeshk. My hesitation is also because I migrated when I was ten and that just isn’t enough time in Iran to have learned the centuries of complicated historical context in that region. It’s also not my expertise, I'm a filmmaker. The way I express myself and do my part in making the world a better place is by aligning with filmmakers who are experts in their field, by helping raise the voice of people who have a unique perspective, who have stories that go beyond the mundane and make us see and feel each other as humans. Not just another unfortunate person. That's the heart of my studio: to tell impactful stories.
During the pandemic a picture editor, Lea Vrabelova (also an immigrant!), that we had worked with called me up about a Lebanese movie she was cutting. Elias Matar co-wrote and directed it, he's the founder of both the Lighthouse Peace Initiative and the Manara Center which gives Syrian refugee an outlet to express themselves in the performing arts. He was born in the states but raised in Syria. We met up to discuss the movie with my re-recording mixer, Chris Goodes. Elias and I hit it off immediately because of our shared Middle Eastern background. While providing more context about the story, he kept mentioning the actors and all the crew were not trained, they're refugees. I didn't think of it much then because we were focused on the work at hand. We did tons of sound design, foley and dialog mixing to bring the haunted house to a whole new cinematic level. We panned the dialog all across the stage based on the person holding the camera (AKA perspective-based panning). Keep in mind there is multiple shooting mediums. It was tons of work but once we achieved that separation it became such a fun playground during the mix.
Synopsis: When a group of young filmmakers set out to make a documentary about a haunted house, they encounter otherworldly forces engaged in an ancient war for the soul of the land.
This was back in 2021. Thinking back at it now as the conflict has grown so large recently, what Elias has done is tremendous. He hired local crew and talent from refugee camps, uplifted and gave hope to kids in war-torn coutries (we must not forget they're creative too!), broke the norm by making a horror Arabic movie with ties to the local culture and history, and his non-profit is out there right now delivering food and supplies and doing Gods work. All while not dumbing down the script either- the movie has one of the most unique plot twists/easter eggs I've seen in the horror/found footage genre. And on a technical level, with the multiple shooting cameras and inexperienced crew they managed to capture pristine sound in a very hard environment (acoustically speaking). There was no chance we could do ADR, the talent may have had to relocate, who knows if they still have the sound recording gear, we definitely couldn't fly them out. We had no issues searching the sound rolls to find outtakes and wild lines, or other bits to use to layer up a line or a word to mimick the sounds of ghosts, etc.
If you want to support his non-profit initiative and watch something like you've never seen (and hear our work!), you can rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, etc. Here's the trailer:
This LetterBoxd review says it way better than I could:
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★★★★★ Watched by madeline 02 Jul 2022
Watched at Portland Horror Film Fest 2022
The last 20 minutes or so of What Is Buried Must Remain have played on repeat on my brain every hour since Thursday night. It's the most harrowing piece of found footage horror I've seen in years, on par with the original Blair Witch Project. When the entire nature of the plot becomes clear, and the haunting shows its true face, the film descends into a delirious, dark, anxious madness that doesn't let you go until the very end.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Buried follows three young Syrian refugee filmmakers who want to spend the night in an abandoned French estate. Shadi wants to make a YouTube video, Al wants to make a serious documentary, and Alaa wants to strike for big-time fame. Unfortunately, they'll find none of that in the Fontaine house, which is home to a host of horrific haunts that start driving them all slightly mad.
Buried swings for the fences in ways found footage horror has been unwilling to for a minute. Made by and starring a crew of refugees, the film gives a platform to traumas, fears, hopes usually reduced to ideological cudgels when discussed by Americans. The cultural fears that burble up in the narrative are potent and weighty, with an urgency that doesn't feel sanded off or sacrificed in the name of accessibility. It's an unapologetically socially minded picture, with a square focus on the transgenerational transmission of violence of French colonizers, and the trap of capitalist success made in its ruins. Also a very empathetic and real depiction of drug addiction. I lost one of my friend in high school to heroin. Everyone blamed him and not his circumstances. And I wish people had interrogated those more, and not just blamed The Drugs and move on. Buried tackles this attitude head on with an empathetic eye towards that very addiction that feels real, not moralistic.
Remember the last few minutes of Blair Witch? Where they're finally in the house and it feels like the walls are closing in on you and the shadows themselves come alive? That's the entirety of this. The entire movie feels that tense. It feels difficult to breathe. The last few seconds of the movie feature the outside for the last time. It feels like a breath of fresh air. Like going outside at the end of an afternoon after waking up early and not leaving the house until then. Everything else is a waking nightmare. Night terrors lurk around every corner, and reality starts to break down between the walls.
The terrors feel lived and the emotions feel real. Three people breaking down over the struggles they've been through to get to this point. It's a tragedy with no happy outcomes past a certain point. As the film pulls you into its aggressively bleak world - holds you in its thin hope against the evil white spectre of colonialism - you're faced with the same feeling of hopelessness that plagues its leads. Whiteness and lightness is something to fear, to dread.
What Is Buried Must Remain is a rare gem. Art made about a crisis by people who have survived the crisis, working through their shared and individual traumas, making the world feel the same fears they've been plagued by. The body count isn't high, there isn't a lot of gore, the jump scares are minimal (but definitely there). What you're here for is the passion of the filmmakers, the claustrophobia of the Fontaine house, the aggressive dread, the maddening slip into unreality. I won't forget the final chase sequence soon. It hit me like a truck. This whole movie did. It's a rare artistic achievement, and even rarer that we, as viewers, get a window into the horrors of people too often reduced to headlines and abstractions by the West. Shadi, Al, and Alaa are three living, breathing characters with dreams. Becoming familiar with characters like them is how we can better understand the state of the world we're in, and of the people in it.
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